


But you don't have to come back

by trailsofpaper (Sanwall)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Coast Guard AU, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-06 17:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15200075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanwall/pseuds/trailsofpaper
Summary: Coming out to Boston in the fall of 1953 ought to have been a good thing for Jon Lovett; throwing himself into his work instead of getting lost in his head. So here he is, working with his best friend Jon Favreau to build a database to predict the weather.But Lovett couldn’t have predicted that out in the middle of the damn sea someone like Tommy Vietor would find him and lay bare every one of his stupid weaknesses.





	1. Lost at sea

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know much about the US East Coast but I come with an abundance of sea feelings, especially re: Tommy Vietor. I love boats, I love Tommy; this was bound to happen. Lovett has a lot of headaches because he’s secretly the heroine of a romantic-gothic novel, where the weather either matches his mood or serves to cruelly highlight it. The use of Massachusetts poets, and others, surprised me more than you, probably.
> 
> A million thanks to [semperama](http://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama) for the absolutely invaluable cheerleading, handholding and beta-reading (any remaining punctuation mistakes are absolutely my own, and you have her to thank for much of the emotional coherency of the story). I owe you so much, most of all for introducing me to tommyjon fic in the first place!

_ “Hope” is the thing with feathers - _ __  
_ That perches in the soul - _ __  
_ And sings the tune without the words - _ __  
_ And never stops - at all - _ _  
_ __ \- Emily Dickinson, “Hope” is the thing with feathers

* * *

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Lovett said, gazing up into the overcast sky - the white of it was almost blinding, making him squint at the few gulls circling overhead. Favreau shot him an unimpressed look from where he was perched on the hood of the boat - it probably wasn’t called a hood when it was a boat engine Lovett mused silently, but whatever.

“If I recall correctly, you were the one who insisted no one else could do the calculations right,” he replied easily. Lovett resented him. The swaying of the boat didn’t make him nauseous exactly, but Lovett felt a little light-headed by it, the vast space spreading out around him in all directions without any promise of solid land beneath his feet.

“Yes, well,” Lovett sighed and slumped back against the deck railing. “Cataloguing barometric pressure gets old real fast. I ought to have someone else get out here, freeze their ass off on their own dime.”

“We’re fully funded for this research, for once,” Favreau said and breezed past him to look at the barometer before he pulled out his pad from inside his coat and made a note. His ears and nose were nipped red by the wind, and Lovett sniffed in sympathy.

“Wanna take a little detour?” Favreau asked then, turning his annoyingly handsome profile to the west, toward land. “I hear the storm changed some of the coastline up here.”

“What I _ want  _ is to get back as soon as possible and curl up in bed and never leave,” Lovett muttered. Favreau only laughed, damn him, and slipped into the cabin to plot their unnecessarily long course home.

“Anchors away!” he called and switched the gears to forward.

“We’ve just been drifting, idiot,” Lovett muttered and pulled his woolly cap down so far that it covered his eyebrows when the apparent wind threatened to tear it off his head as the boat accelerated through the choppy sea.

Despite himself, Lovett felt a little thrill of relief when the coast came into view, a black band on the horizon that grew in size with every passing second.

“Hey, you wanna come here and help me navigate?” Favreau shouted over the wind. 

To mask the shiver running down his spine Lovett shouted back, “Don’t tell me you’ve already gotten us lost!”

“Hardly,” Favreau said when Lovett pressed himself inside the cabin beside him. “I just not familiar with this part of the coast, but that’s what we’ve got the nautical chart for.”

_ “Nautical chart,” _ Lovett muttered and leaned over the book with waterproof pages. “Just call it sea map, you pretentious ocean lover.”

“What was that, Lovett?” Favreau asked, with enough of a good-humoured inflection in his voice to let Lovett know he’d heard and was amused.

“Leave me out of your love affair with the sea,” Lovett said loudly and squinted at the fast-approaching coast, unsure of how to match it with a corresponding spot on the chart. “I’m an innocent bystander, I do not care for her.”

Favreau cut the speed down so quickly that Lovett felt the waves heave the boat forward until it settled into a slow and steady pace. The helmsman leaned sideways to look at the chart, and Lovett was happy to let him.

“Hmm,” he said, and Lovett blinked.

“What do you mean, _ ‘hmm’?” _ he demanded. “Don’t _ ‘hmm’  _ me! You wanted to take a detour, and I want the record to state that I was explicitly against this move, and thus it is your responsibility to get us back.”

“I’ll get us back,” Favreau said, sounding altogether too flippant about it. “We only need to follow the coast southward and we’ll hit Boston sooner or later.”

_ “We’ll hit Boston sooner or later,”  _ Lovett parroted back with as much scathing sarcasm as he could muster. “Great! We’re going to have to live off the ocean. Did you bring a fishing rod? If we end up shipwrecked I want you to shoot me first and live off my corpse. It’s no more than you deserve.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Favreau said and spun the wheel to turn them south. Lovett could read the compass well enough to tell as much. “We have a fully functioning radio to call for help if the need arises, which it won’t.”

“It better not,” Lovett said, which admittedly wasn’t his best comeback, not even when punctuated with his exit from the cabin. He stalked to the bow, leaning on it with crossed arms to sulk for a bit. He’d suffer the wind and the spray of salt water in steadfast misery; maybe it would make him look weathered and manly. 

He soon shook it off though and went over to their equipment. Might as well get some additional data collected, while they were out on this dumb odyssey of Favreau’s; the sky had darkened and rain seemed to be threatening. Lovett had to swallow and tamp down on his nerves, told himself he needed to focus and suppress the headache that seemed to want to sneak up on him, throbbing dully at the base of his neck.

He became lost in the work, scribbling furiously on his own pad while ignoring the headache, so much so that the other boat was close enough for him to hear the engine above the rush of the sea before he snapped out of it.

“Boat!” he yelled back at the cabin. “There’s a boat!”

“I see her,” Favreau shouted back, and Lovett had to suppress rolling his eyes.  _ Her. _

_ She  _ was a class smaller than Lovett and Favreau’s little research vessel, made of beautiful lacquered wood and shining chrome, and even Lovett knew enough to see that it sat well in the water. The only person onboard was inside the cabin, keeping the boat from crashing into theirs even though they had also cut the power. Lovett saw the door to the cabin slam open, and then a voice over the waves:

“Hey, you’re not lost are you?”

“What’s it to you?” Lovett yelled back, before Favreau could.

“These are tricky waters,” came the voice, surprisingly steady over the sound of the sea. “You could run up on some shoals if you’re not careful.”

“Thanks,” Lovett replied. “But we’re doing work here!”

“I’m with the Coast Guard,” came the answer. “If you just follow me I can lead you back to port.”

Lovett waved at the other boat and shoved his pad down into the oversized pocket of his coat to stomp over to the cabin. The first drops of rain splattered on the deck.

“What’s he saying?” Favreau asked, head tilted to the side like an attentive golden retriever.

“He’s with the Coast Guard and he wants us to follow him,” Lovett said, torn between the relief of getting help and the irritation of being interrupted.  Favreau only made a noise like he was pleasantly surprised and started to turn the wheel.

“Go tell him we’ll be right behind.”

* * *

Lovett had never thought that the sight of Boston Harbor would make him feel good. Nevertheless, docking safely beside the Coast Guard vessel made some knot of tension dissolve between his shoulder blades and it felt easier to breathe in the briny air. He wasn’t about to let that stop him, however, and while Favreau was busy with the ropes, he jumped to the dock and stomped over to the bow of the Coast Guard boat. The rain hadn’t followed them to shore, and for that at least Lovett was grateful.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” he began, overcoming the slight tremor to his voice by sheer power of will. He saw the captain of the vessel move inside the cabin. “But we were gathering important scientific data and you can’t just cut in and tell us to pack it up whenever it pleases you!”

A man emerged from the cabin - he was predictably large, dressed in a broad, brown jacket but lacking that brimmed, white cap that Lovett had come to expect from the likes of him. The gloomy daylight reflected off the blond hair on his bare head, and when he came closer, Lovett was startled to notice how young he looked; the boyish flush to his cheeks and the clarity of his bright eyes were at odds with the imposing cut of his silhouette.

“I’m sorry sir,” the man said in a deep, pleasant voice. Lovett had never, not once, in his life been called sir. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you, I only thought you seemed a little lost out there.”

“That’s not the point!” Lovett argued, but by now the man had come all the way up to the bow, and he threw the tethering line to Lovett as if he expected him to moor the boat. Instinctively, Lovett braced himself to keep the boat from being pushed back out, but he wasn’t going to embarrass himself by attempting to tie a knot. “The point is we were in the middle of something important! You don’t even look like you’re with the Coast Guard!”

That seemed to get a rise out of him - Lovett could see his jaw tightening, his eyebrows lowering - not that he had much of eyebrows at all, the change in expression mostly visible in the shifting of shadows across his face.

“You can leave a complaint with my superior,” the man said curtly and leaped onto the dock with considerably more grace than Lovett had managed. He took the line from Lovett’s hands and, with annoying competency, tied his boat to the mooring post.

“Maybe I will,” Lovett said. The man straightened up, and he was so tall he practically loomed. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas Vietor,” he said and blinked. “What’s yours?”

“That’s not important,” Lovett said and stuck out his chin. “Jon Lovett.”

“Tommy!” Favreau said. 

Lovett turned around so quickly that his coat twirled out. “What?” he said, incredulity coloring his voice.  _ “Tommy?” _

He watched as Favreau strode past him and enveloped this Tommy in a crushing hug. Tommy returned it readily, even gave Favreau’s back a hearty clap as they untangled.

“Jon,” Tommy said, smiling brightly. “What’s a stand-up guy like you doing out here?”

“Data survey,” Favreau said and made a gesture wide enough to encompass all of the Atlantic ocean. “We need to gather meteorological information to build a database.”

“This sounds like something you’re gonna explain to me over drinks and I’m gonna forget everything as soon as you say it,” Tommy replied, and Lovett couldn’t help but make an indignant sound. Both men turned toward him, twin looks of puzzled equanimity on their faces that drove Lovett nuts.

“Maybe _ you  _ can explain to us why you thought pulling us away from our work was a good idea!” he said, mostly to wipe those looks off their faces. He only partially succeeded. Favreau grinned and turned back to Tommy.

“Hey, drinks sounds great,” he said. “How about we get you a round and catch up some?”

Tommy, like Lovett, seemed completely unable to resist that patented Favreau smile, so the evening found all three of them squeezed into a booth in what passed for a pub in Boston, each of them with a pint of beer in hand. Lovett didn’t even like beer. 

He slumped down and pulled his cap off, grimacing as he dug his fingers in and ruffled his matted curls. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tommy look at him, but Lovett wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that it made him uncomfortable.

“Lovett’s not going to actually complain to your superior,” Favreau was saying and elbowed Lovett in the side. Lovett made a vaguely affirming noise and took a deep gulp of the beer to keep from saying something.

“That’s very kind of you,” Tommy said and tapped a long finger against his beer glass. “I’m, ah, I’m gonna have to write a report though, I’m sorry.”

Lovett swallowed the mouthful of beer so fast he almost choked on it.

“What do you mean, you have to write a report?” he said hoarsely. “We didn’t do anything wrong!”

“No, no,” Tommy said quickly, but it seemed his accent came out when he was flustered because it sounded more like  _ “naw, naw”.  _ Like a braying sheep, Lovett thought uncharitably. “Nothing will come of it, probably. It’s just regulations, you know?”

“That red tape,” Favreau said knowledgeably and knocked his glass first against Tommy’s and then Lovett’s. “Don’t we know it.”

* * *

It turned out that, besides being tall and apple-cheeked, Tommy Vietor was a fucking liar. Something _ did  _ come of his report, because Lovett was shaken awake in his bed by Favreau at fuck o’clock in the morning, and he was saying that he’d gotten a phone call from the fucking Coast Guard telling them to come in and “clarify the situation.”

“I fucking hate him,” Lovett muttered as he pulled his coat on. “How the fuck do you even know him, Jon?”

“Don’t let Mrs Nordstrom hear you using that kind of language,” Favreau said quietly, referring to the kind woman who let them board in her house while they conducted their months long scientific survey. Lovett could hear her in the kitchen, moving about and probably making breakfast. He wished more than anything that he had the time to grab a cup of her coffee before they went, but Favreau was relentless - Lovett was hustled out into the street as soon as he’d wound his scarf around his throat, and before long Favreau managed to hail down a cab as well.

The cab took them to the old part of town and to the seafront, and Lovett was glad the driver knew where the Coast Guard HQ was because he would never have picked it out from the magazine buildings and shipyards and whatever else was scattered along the Boston Harbor coastline.

Lovett got out of the car as soon as it came to a halt, leaving Favreau to pay, and was already through the doors when he caught up with him. Lovett marched right up to the welcoming desk and to the woman with impeccably styled hair and and startlingly bright red lipstick behind it.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a tone of voice that made clear it was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Yeah, we were told to come here to ‘clarify a couple of things’,” Lovett said, hopefully conveying in equal measure how much he didn’t want to be here. “Your words, not mine.”

“Hi,” Favreau said as he came up behind Lovett. “I’m Jon Favreau. I spoke with your office on the phone this morning.”

Lovett saw in real time the devastating effect of Favreau’s general existence take hold. The line of the woman’s mouth softened and she fluttered her eyelashes.“Mr Favreau, of course! The chief will see you in a minute, please just take a seat!”

Favreau graced her with a genial smile before he sat down in one of the chairs lining the wall of the foyer. Lovett just glared at her before following his example, slumping down in the chair beside his friend with a loud sigh.

“What’s up with you?” Favreau asked. The bastard didn’t even sound annoyed, just inquisitive. “This is probably just regulation, like Tommy said.”

“I don’t like the military,” Lovett muttered and shifted on the chair. “Even if the Coast Guard is barely that. Hey, so how do you know Tommy anyway?”

Favreau sighed and laced his fingers in his lap. “It’s a long story. We lost contact a few years back anyway.”

“We’ve got time,” Lovett said with a pointed look to the secretary who’d told them to wait, but that turned out to be false because at that moment she got to her feet and called to them.

“He’s ready to see you now!”

They were shown into an office where, to Lovett’s dismay, Tommy was already standing, in what was probably parade rest or some such bullshit. Lovett scowled at his broad stance, and when the chief, whose name was Murphy according to the plaque on the desk, asked them to have a seat, Lovett flung himself into one of the two chairs with a demonstrative flair, refusing to adopt anything resembling good posture.

“Lieutenant Vietor here has expressed concern about your scientific mission,” Murphy said and leaned back in his own chair. Lovett thought that he ought to have a cigar beneath that gray mustache, but some people had no sense of style. Murphy was cigarless, and apparently quite joyless as well, because he only regarded them with a cold, appraising gaze. 

Favreau shifted and glanced at Tommy before he said, “I don’t see why he would, sir. I’m cleared to operate our boat. I know what I’m doing.”

“With all due respect,” Tommy said. Lovett wasn’t clear on exactly who he was addressing with due respect. “With autumn comes stormy weather and not even someone who’s been on these waters all their lives can be prepared for all eventualities.”

“What is it you’re doing out there anyway?” Murphy asked, and Lovett bristled at his dismissive tone. He sat up a little straighter.

“You remember the great big storm three years ago?” he asked. Murphy’s mustache contorted into a frown and Lovett went on. “Laid waste to huge swathes of the coast, lots of people lost? We’re working on a way to predict weather like that. Then you won’t have to go by your aching joints to know there’s going to be rain or whatever.”

“Lovett,” Favreau said softly, but with a warning in his tone. He didn’t touch Lovett - he never did - but his voice was just as effective in shutting him up. Lovett pressed his lips into a flat line and hunched his shoulders as he crossed his arms.

Murphy’s mustache quivered.

“But you don’t know how to predict weather like that just yet,” he said gruffly, “and until you do, you might as well take Vietor with you if you’re going to be out for an entire day. We’ll all sleep better in our beds for it.”

Lovett made a noise of protest, and to his surprise, so did Tommy.

“Sir,” Tommy said, startled out of his parade rest. “That’s not what I was suggesting-”

“That’s too bad, Vietor. It’ll be good for you, having something to do,” Murphy said and turned to Favreau and Lovett. “Are you setting out today?”

“If the weather allows,” Favreau said, and Lovett knew without looking at him that he was smiling that disarming, gap-toothed smile of his. Murphy’s mustache twitched again - perhaps it was his way of smiling, what did Lovett know - and he slapped both of his palms against his desk.

“Very well! Vietor will report to your vessel as an official Coast Guard detail. Good luck, gentlemen!”

 


	2. Tying knots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The polite skies over Boston couldn’t possibly accommodate._  
>  \- Sylvia Plath, Two Campers in Cloud Country

Lovett had to admit that one of the upsides of having Lieutenant Tommy Vietor along for the ride was that he and Favreau dealt with all the boating business aboard the _ RV Coleridge _ . Lovett was free to hang out with the barometer, anemometer, hygrometer, and the other measuring equipment, dutifully marking down each point of information.

They’d reached their destination out at sea, Favreau cutting the engine to let them drift while they worked. Lovett was aware he’d been exceptionally stand-offish, even by his standards, when Tommy approached him, and yet Lovett was incapable of biting his tongue.

“So,” he said and straightened up without turning to him, only glancing at him out the corner of his eye.  _ “Lieutenant  _ Vietor, huh?”

“Lieutenant junior grade, actually,” Tommy said and came to a halt. He had his hands in the pockets of his coat, a formless brown thing with a tag reading ‘Coast Guard’ in neat letters on his arm, but he kept his balance easily on the faintly heaving deck.

“I don’t care about any of that rank bullshit,” Lovett said and waved his notepad around without taking his eyes off the equipment. “If Favs gets to call you Tommy, I’m gonna call you that too.”

“You were the one who-” Tommy said and then broke off. Lovett could feel his gaze boring a hole in his neck, so he flipped his notebook shut and turned to him at last.

“What?” he said, willing the flush creeping up his neck to stay down. He wasn’t used to being regarded this intently, and he had no idea how to read the look on Tommy’s face. Determination?

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot,” Tommy said. “I’m sorry I interrupted your work yesterday. I hope I can make it up to you.”

Lovett squinted, unsure if he could trust the sincerity in Tommy’s voice. In lack of evidence to the contrary, Lovett chose to accept it and flapped the closed notepad at him.

“It’s fine; as long as you handle the knots and ropes you’re good with me.”

Tommy’s thin lips quirked into a smile that made him seem younger yet. Lovett realized he had no idea of how old he was - a lieutenant, even junior grade, wasn’t nothing. He couldn’t be straight out of Coast Guard school, and if he knew Favs-

“Are you a meteorologist too?” Tommy asked. His gaze slipped from Lovett to the instruments.

“Meteorologist? Me? Heavens no,” Lovett said and pressed his notepad to his chest. “I’m a mathematician!”

Tommy glanced back at him, evidently intrigued.

“What is a mathematician doing on a meteorological study?” he asked and took a hand out of his coat pocket to tap at the barometer, which was holding steady. The weather was actually nice for once, the waves reflecting a crisp blue autumn sky, the air not quite so biting.

“Are you actually interested in the application of numerical modeling on weather forecasts or are you just making small talk?” Lovett asked, a little brusquely. 

Tommy’s eyebrows rose and he cleared his throat before he said, “Both?”

“Oh, you’re in for it now buddy,” Favreau called from the cabin - the boat was small enough that voices carried. “When Lovett gets going, he never stops!”

Lovett allowed his mouth to stretch into a grin. Time to take stock of junior grade Tommy Vietor, Coast Guard detail, see how long he could keep his eyes from glazing over.

“All right. Numerical analysis is math that is actually useful in the real world,” Lovett began flippantly, in the well-versed tone of someone who had come perilously close to actually fist-fighting a mathematical analyst over discrete mathematics. “When you do numerical analysis, instead of putting all your money on finding exact answers you just have to keep within a reasonable margin of error-”

To Lovett’s absolute astonishment, Tommy kept looking at him with bright eyes while he talked, and when Tommy opened his mouth it was to ask questions and not excuse himself to leave. Somewhere along the line Lovett realized they’d stopped talking about math and started talking about who Eisenhower was going to appoint as Chief of the Justice Department instead, and the whole way back, when Tommy took the wheel to let Favreau go through Lovett’s notes, Lovett trailed after him to explain why dogs were superior to cats. Tommy actually laughed when Lovett gesticulated so wildly his hand smacked into the window, and Lovett was startled into silence by it.

“I agree with you, you know,” Tommy said, his voice soft but still audible over the drone of the boat’s engine. “I think dogs make better pets than cats.”

“That’s not a distinction I made,” Lovett said immediately, to cover for his silence and the weird way Tommy’s laugh made him feel. “I said that dogs are better than cats, period.”

“Well, I think cats are better than dogs at hunting vermin,” Tommy said, and Lovett felt the deck beneath his feet tilt as Tommy turned the wheel to correct course. He opened his mouth to keep the argument going, but he felt that he never quite regained his balance.

* * *

Speaking of dogs, the very next day, when Tommy was busy in the aft, catching the buoy as they passed it to dock, and Favreau was steering them into port, Lovett had been tasked with standing at the bow to moor them. Lovett took a deep breath and eyed the iron grey waters between the boat and the dock; he was a grown man with developed hand-eye coordination, it was fine, and when Favreau deftly put the gear in reverse, Lovett jumped.

He landed safely and twisted around quickly to push his foot against the bow so the waves wouldn’t crash it against the dock. He went to twist the rope around the mooring post, already doing his damndest to visualize how to tie the damn knot, when there was a scrabbling sound against the worn wood of the dock, and Lovett was nearly bowled over by sixteen pounds of over-excited dog.

Lovett let go of the rope to grab the dog by its forelegs where it was jumping up at him. The dog wasn’t hostile, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt to have a paw swiped over unprotected skin, and Lovett tried his best soothing voice to calm the dog down. “There boy, easy. Easy, come on, down. Down.”

“Lovett!” Tommy shouted as he came sprinting across the deck. 

Lovett realized the rope had splashed into the water, and yelled back, “Shit, the rope, Tommy! Stop it from getting into the propeller!”

With a dexterity Lovett envied, Tommy grabbed the rope hanging off the bow as he bounded past, jumping to the dock in the same movement. Ignoring the water that dripped down his coat and soaked his pants, he started coiling the rope together by looping it around his elbow, carefully fishing it out of the water and making sure it didn’t tangle with the aft propeller as he did so.

The dog gave a loud whine, and even if he sat down on his haunches as Lovett let go, he couldn’t quite keep still. The dog was large and mostly black, speckled with brown and some white around the muzzle, triangular ears standing straight up, and mostly seemed to want attention. Lovett buried his hand in the thick fur coat of the neck to keep the animal settled.

“You okay?” Tommy asked, sounding just a little out of breath, and Lovett started from where he was absently petting the dog with both hands.

“What? Yeah of course,” Lovett said. “Sorry about the rope.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

The rope was safely out of harm’s way by now, and Tommy had the coils hanging off his arm while grabbing the rope with both hands, his shoulders hunched with the effort of keeping the boat steady. Lovett eyed the shift of muscle that he could barely see under the layers of clothes on Tommy’s back, and before he could stop himself, he said, “Hey, teach me how to tie the boat to the dock.”

The dog whined again, and the fluffy tail whacked against the board, but he stayed put. Lovett kept his hand in the fur as Tommy looked at him.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s- just get it around something first thing, so you won’t have to hold the boat by yourself.”

To demonstrate, Tommy leaned down to shuck the rope around a mooring post, some of the tension leaving his shoulders as the pull of the boat lessened.

“If you’re just staying for a short while you can loop it around like this,” Tommy said, and laid down two coils of rope and tightened them. Lovett didn’t quite catch how he twisted the knot into place, but he undid it soon anyway, gripping the rope with both hands while keeping one loop around the post, and eyed the boat.

“This is a good distance,” Tommy said and nodded to where Favreau was busy checking the ropes to the buoy, having cut the engine as soon as Tommy had the rope in hand on the dock. “You don’t want the ropes to be too tightly wound, better to let her sway with the waves or else the edges of the dock or boat with saw through the ropes. That and it’ll allow for the sea level change when the tide goes out.”

“All right,” Lovett said, carefully.

“This,” Tommy said with a little smile that didn’t seem haughty at all, but rather a little bashful, “is called a double half-hitch, and if you know it you’ll be good no matter what.”

So Lovett watched, keeping the dog calm by scratching underneath its ears and chin, while Tommy demonstrated a double half-hitch one time, and then a second time. By then Favreau had come up to the bow, watching the proceedings for a moment before he clambered ashore.

“Who’s this?” he said and approached the dog, who sniffed at his outstretched hand, tail wagging.

“No idea,” Lovett said. “He seemed real keen on making my acquaintance which is understandable because, as everyone knows, I’m a regular riot to hang out with.”

Tommy laughed and undid his second double half-hitch.

“Here,” he said, smiling brightly, and threw the rope to Lovett. “You try it.”

Lovett swallowed and did his best to imitate what Tommy had done. His hands felt weak and inadequate to the task, but he managed a knot, and Tommy’s hand brushed his when he reached over to check his work. Lovett pulled back his hands like he’d been burnt, but Tommy didn’t seem to notice. He declared Lovett’s work acceptable, shot him an encouraging smile, and turned to Favreau and the dog.

“Let’s see if we can’t find your owner, buddy,” Tommy said softly and ruffled the thick coat of the dog’s neck. The dog closed his eyes and leaned into Tommy’s leg, like he felt completely safe and loved. Lovett could sympathise with the notion.

* * *

Before Lovett knew it, Tommy had slotted into his and Favreau’s friendship as easily as if he’d always been there. It was odd, because when they went out in the evenings sometimes, to grab dinner or a drink or both, Favreau and Tommy fell into the kind of loud, brash camaraderie that felt alien to Lovett, with Favreau’s Yankee dialect growing thicker beside Tommy’s notable Boston accent. Lovett wasn’t exactly unused to being the odd one out, but then in the morning, when Tommy greeted him with a smile as he deftly rolled up a length of rope to keep it out of the way on deck, he made Lovett feel like he wasn’t so out of place, here on a goddamn boat farther from civilization than he ever thought he’d have to be. It was not something he’d have expected from a man whose full name was Thomas Frederick Vietor IV, but then again, there was something to be said for him choosing to go by the modest and slightly juvenile “Tommy.”

A month after Thomas Vietor IV dropped into their lives, Favreau received word that one of his papers was going to be published in a peer reviewed journal, which, Lovett could absolutely be happy for him, this was good for both of them, he just didn’t want to have to make an occasion out of it. But of course the first thing that happened when they met up with Tommy the following the day was Favreau exclaiming: “This calls for celebration!” Tommy laughed and congratulated him with a hug while Lovett stood to the side and waited for them to get on with it, somehow unwilling to be the first one aboard the boat.

“That’s fantastic, man. Let me buy you dinner,” Tommy said when he and Favreau untangled from the hug and kept each other at arm’s length. “You’re invited too, Lovett.”

“Great,” Lovett called, and added internally: _ Just what I needed. _

Tommy insisted that it wasn’t a high-brow place, but Favreau still wanted to change out of his work clothes and received vocal support from Lovett. They stopped first at Tommy’s where he could leave his car and change into something nicer in record time - Lovett thought of a drill sergeant timing how long it took to get in and out of clothes - and then they took a cab to Mrs Nordstrom’s, where Lovett had to dig deep into his makeshift closet to find a pullover that wasn’t too rumpled to wear in public.

When he got out, furiously combing his fingers through curls that refused to settle, he found Favreau leaned out from the passenger seat of the cab, smoking a rare cigarette, and Tommy standing beside the door, elbow on the car roof and conversing quietly with him. When Lovett approached, Tommy seemed to startle, and he hurried to pull open the back seat door for him.

“Ready to go?” he asked brightly, with a small smile.

“Always ready,” Lovett replied. “That’s your motto, isn’t it?”

Tommy nodded, but the smile slipped off his lips and it made Lovett feel weird, like he’d said something wrong. Favreau talked casually about his research on the way there, and while Lovett only listened with half an ear, Tommy sat straight and seemed to want to know everything Favreau could tell him. Lovett wondered idly why someone like Tommy, who had such an obvious thirst for knowledge, had opted not to pursue something intellectual. His parents would undoubtedly have seen him through an Ivy League school, and yet he’d gone into the Coast Guard of all places, and not even kept to a desk job but taken to the deck instead.

The place Tommy took them to _ was  _ nice, with a live band and a singer in a white tux in the corner as entertainment while they waited for their food. The decor was a little stuffy, all gilded candelabras and dark wood, but at least the menu wasn’t in French. The singer had a good voice, just the right kind of crooning to melt into the background while they talked.

“This reminds me of the time I met Frank Sinatra,” Lovett said and enjoyed Favreau’s rolling of his eyes almost as much as the widening of Tommy’s.

“You have not met Frank Sinatra,” Tommy countered, his glass of wine halfway lifted to his lips.

“Well, I suppose ‘met’ is a generous term,” Lovett said, swirling his own wine glass dramatically. “But I came face to face with Ol’ Blue Eyes when I was handing out newspapers in Manhattan.”

Tommy listened with an open mouth as Lovett retold the only slightly embellished story of how he’d helped Frank Sinatra down a set of stairs because he’d been so drunk he couldn’t see straight at five o’clock in the morning.

“And, well,” Lovett concluded after a sip of wine, “he promised to make me famous, but I never heard back from him so I just went to Williams to pursue math, with only a minor in the arts.”

Favreau gave a loud snort, and Tommy gave a chuckle that turned into a full laugh, crinkling the corners of his eyes and making his face flush. Lovett grinned, even as Favreau said, “Typical Lovett, to make a story about Frank Sinatra into one about his college credentials.”

“So excuse me if I have a precious few things to be proud of!” Lovett protested. “Meeting Sinatra and going to college, what else do I have going for me?”

“An accomplished science partner,” Tommy said and lifted his glass. “To Jon Favreau, who published a paper I could never hope to understand.”

“Atmospheric readings are not that complicated,” Lovett said after they’d clinked glasses, just to make Favreau protest. He was easy like that, immediately launching off into a tirade about the nuances of barometric pressure, his accent growing more pronounced as he went on. It was music to Lovett’s ears. He grinned broadly as he listened, ready to jump in whenever a chance presented himself. As he set his elbows on the table, he happened to catch Tommy’s eye.

Tommy was smiling too, but it was understated, just a tug at the corner of his mouth. Lovett could barely make out the freckles on his cheeks in the soft overhead light of the restaurant, but there was a definite mischievous flash in his blue eyes as he met Lovett’s gaze, like he was in on the joke.

_Fuck,_ Lovett thought, when Tommy turned his eyes away, to Favreau who still hadn’t stopped talking and was waving his wineglass around with risk of spilling it. _That wasn’t supposed to happen._

Tommy paid for the meal in its entirety, insisting that it was his pleasure. Lovett supposed that coming from a family where you needed a Roman numeral to set your name apart from your ancestors had its pros, but he didn’t much want to come up against the cons of old family money and expectations. That never ended well, he’d learned.


	3. Whole-hearted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your absence is inconspicuous; / Nobody can tell what I lack_  
>  \- Sylvia Plath, Parliament Hill Fields

Like Tommy had said, Favreau was an accomplished science partner, but he was also  unforgivingly dedicated. It didn’t matter if Mrs Nordstrom was out for the week and had forgotten to buy more coffee; there was no time to stop on the way to the harbor.

“We have to go out with the tide!” Favreau insisted and ruffled Lovett’s knitted cap so it was pushed over his eyes.

“The tide can go fuck itself,” Lovett said solemnly and let the cap stay where it was, but he still found himself aboard their floating science station, sullen and with a headache making him squint into the rising sun that seemed to taunt him with its very presence.

Speaking of taunts, the wind abated almost completely during the course of the day, and with the sun being out, it grew hot enough that Lovett opened his coat and stuffed the cap into the pocket of it, to let whatever breeze remaining find its way into his sweaty curls. Favreau shed his coat entirely, and it seemed that Tommy ran hot, because not only did he shed his coast guard jacket, he also pulled off what Lovett had to assume was his coast guard issue pullover.

This meant that Tommy walked around deck in only a white t-shirt, and really, Lovett was loud, not strong-willed, so it was difficult not to pay attention to the way the muscles shifted in Tommy’s back when he bent over to check the knots of the fenders, or the line of his waist as he clambered on top of the cabin to check the lanterns, not to mention the tilt of his hips when he settled back against the rail to talk to Favreau, the sun glinting off his hair. Tommy found all sorts of ways to keep occupied while they worked, Lovett had discovered, and it was infuriating.

“I want ice cream,” Lovett declared loudly as soon as they got back for the day - the walk back to land along the pier had never felt so long. Sometimes the heart wanted what the heart wanted, and sometimes the heart wanted frozen sweets after a taxing day. Favreau looked at him and shrugged, perhaps penitent from his unconscionable chipperness that morning, but Tommy shook his head even as he pulled his jacket back on.

“Don’t know if you’ll find an ice cream parlor that’s open this time of year,” he said, frowning thoughtfully.

“Just watch me,” Lovett said, and with a dogged determination he wished he could apply to his daily work, he hunted down an ice cream parlor that was open this time of year. Of course they mainly sold other things, and the flavors were limited to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The three of them painted a fun picture, squeezed into their booth with their coats still on, each with a cone of ice cream.

Favreau had gone with the classic vanilla because of course he had, and Lovett had expected Tommy to do the same. But Tommy, full of surprises apparently, had opted for chocolate, and that left Lovett to take the strawberry, just out of a sense of equality. That and he liked the sweet, slightly artificial flavor that reminded him of summer, despite everything.

“Remember when they built that floating ice cream parlor in the Pacific during the war?” Favreau said and put the entirety of his vanilla ice cream in his giant stupid mouth instead of licking it like a normal person. 

Lovett scrunched his nose at him, but Tommy said, “Yeah, oh man, I remember being so pissed that we were stuck here on the East Coast doing drills.”

“Drills? We?” Lovett said, and some of his ice cream dropped down on his hand when his foot twitched. He ducked down to lap at the spilt ice cream, sealing his mouth over it.

“Yeah, we were both inducted in ‘44,” Tommy said. Lovett’s eyes snapped up to his, and he found Tommy staring back, his cheeks a faint pink. Probably from the wind, Lovett thought.

“You were in the war together?” Lovett demanded incredulously. 

Tommy didn’t answer, but Favreau said, “Yeah, no, I mean, we never made it out of training camp before the war ended, obviously.”

_ Obviously,  _  Lovett thought and glanced at Tommy, who now seemed very preoccupied with his chocolate ice cream, licking away determinedly without looking at either of them. There was some of it dotted on the tip of his nose, and Lovett refused to find it endearing.

* * *

“So, why’d you sign up for the Coast Guard and not, I don’t know, the Navy?” Lovett asked the following day, when Favreau had asked for the wheel and Tommy had ambled out on deck to catch some sun, though today wasn’t warm enough for only a t-shirt. His question might have seemed out of the blue, but Lovett had been mulling it over ever since they'd gotten the damn ice cream.

Lovett could picture it so clearly, these two bright-eyed boys with their backs straight and chin up, ready to do their duty for their country, while Lovett had pinched pennies and tried to sell newspapers to keep food on the table in New York. Neither of them had made it to the front before Japan capitulated though, and Lovett had always thought perhaps Favreau felt a little cheated by it, ever since followed by a dogged determination to make up for it. It seemed to Lovett like maybe Tommy felt something similar, a need to serve his country in other ways since the war hadn’t panned out for him.

Tommy turned to him and regarded him quietly for a moment. Lovett braced himself for being brushed off but, surprising him once again, Tommy gave him an honest answer.

“I wanted to be of use even when we’re not at war.”

_ I ought to have gone into psychology instead of math, _ Lovett thought to himself, and to mask the strange surge of emotion that muddled the thought he said, “You must have felt dumb when the Korean War broke out, huh?”

Tommy laughed, a bright sound that was carried away by the wind. “Sure! But then, I wouldn’t have been much good over there, I don’t think.”

“Well, you’d be home by now anyway, wouldn’t you?” Lovett said and leaned against the railing, the cold of the metal biting into his palms. “Medals pinned to your chest, maybe some color on your cheeks.”

“Hard to say. I mean they’re still negotiating about prisoners of war,” Tommy said, his tone becoming somber as he turned his face out to sea. “They need people. It’s a lot to organize.”

Lovett tightened his grip on the railing further, almost willing his fingers to go numb.

“I was kidding.”

“I know, sorry,” Tommy said and gave Lovett a rueful smile. “Everyone always tells me I’m too serious.”

“I think you’re just the right amount of serious,” Lovett quipped, and then immediately winced inwardly.  _ Too sincere, not funny enough. _

“Tell you what’s serious though,” Tommy said and nodded toward the darkening horizon. “Those clouds. Do you think you could be done for the day?”

“Yeah, sure. The weather will still be here tomorrow,” Lovett said, weakly. Tommy laughed anyway.

Lovett would have to thank the clouds for bailing him out of an awkward conversation of his own making; Tommy nodded at him and walked over to the cabin. Lovett was only a man, and so he watched Tommy’s retreating frame, the flutter of the jacket hanging from broad shoulders, the confident, light gait of someone comfortable on a rolling deck. He disappeared inside to tell Favreau to take them back and Lovett stayed outside, determined to keep his distance even when the front of rain hit them and started to soak through his collar.

The smattering of drops on the deck was loud enough that Lovett didn’t hear Tommy come back out, and the touch of his hand to his shoulder made Lovett jump. He must have imagined the way the warmth seemed to radiate from the palm of Tommy’s hand through the fabric of his coat.

“You’re gonna catch pneumonia if you stay out here,” Tommy said over the sound of rain, and Lovett let himself be led inside the cabin that felt a lot more cramped than before, with the three of them and the smell of wet wool.

When they had docked in the rain slick harbor and Tommy offered to drive them home, like he always did, Lovett piped up, “I have plans, actually. I’ll just catch a cab.”

And before either of them could protest, Lovett waved a goodbye and set off on foot, reasonably certain that he’d be able to hail someone before he was soaked through by the rain. He turned his mind away from the way Tommy had no doubt turned to Favreau with a questioning look and Favreau who’d just shook his head. _ This is just what Lovett’s like,  _ he’d probably say. Well, whatever, Lovett did manage to hail a cab, and the driver didn’t give him a questioning look when Lovett told him the address.

It was still early evening, but even so, Scollay Square was far from quiet. Already there were people, arm in arm or in groups, hurrying across the street to find shelter from the rain as they sought a place to spend the evening. Having grown up in New York, Lovett had a nose for these sorts of things - he knew there were places solely for men of his inclination, but the Scollay Square bars were safer than the Park Square establishments, the clientele more mixed, his deniability more plausible.

It would have been good to go home and change, but instead he soldiered on, slunk inside one of the bars and handed his coat over to the hatcheck girl. She eyed him sympathetically, took in the state of his soaked curls and rumpled sweater vest, but Lovett had no time for her sympathy so he smiled curtly and went further inside to take up station by the bar counter.

Coming out to Boston ought to have been a good thing, he thought ruefully as he hailed the bartender and was handed a bottle and a glass to pour at his own leisure. Get out of New York, throw himself into his work instead of - what was it his ma had said? Languishing at home.

Lovett poured the glass full and took a sullen sip of the cider. He wasn’t languishing, but you could never run away from yourself no matter how you tried. And here he was, in fucking Boston of all places, and even out in the middle of the damn sea, someone like Tommy Vietor had to find him and be tall and good with his hands, making Lovett want to make him laugh, all while being completely fucking out of his reach in every way.

He’d have to find something- someone else until he got over himself. Lovett had to be putting out some kind of right vibe for it, because he hadn’t been stewing in his own thoughts and drinking the cider that tasted more of piss than apple for more than fifteen minutes before a man took up residence on the stool beside him.  _ Rejoice, and men will seek you,  _ Ella Wheeler Wilcox had written. Well, just seem easy enough and they’ll find you anyway.

“Haven’t seen you around here,” said the man, and he sounded friendly enough. Lovett turned to him, careful not to meet his gaze directly as he looked him over. He was handsome, if a little plain. Sandy hair running towards, but not quite reaching, blond, bright eyes, strong jaw, stocky build - he looked like he had a wife and two kids at home and worked nine to five. But who was Lovett to judge? 

He knocked back the last of the cider and said, “I’m new in town, sort of. I’ll only be here a short while.”

The man grinned broadly and shifted a little closer. “That sounds perfect,” he said, and Lovett thought they were off to a good start when the man’s eyes caught on his mouth as he smiled back.

Lovett was several drinks in, having been matched at every step by his companion, when they finally ambled out into the streets; not arm in arm but close enough for it to not matter.

“I hope you know a place,” Lovett had mumbled, “because I’ve got a roommate and I don’t think he’d be too keen on us stumbling in like this.”

The man, whose first name was Robert and whose last name Lovett didn’t care to know, had been around before, because he knew which hotels would look the other way if two fellas wanted a room for a night. Lovett felt reckless, the itch under his skin just persistent enough that he followed him, all the way up to a room

“Nice place,” Lovett said before he could stop himself, eyeing the peeling wallpaper and the bed that had certainly seen better days. Robert shrugged and took off his coat, not a trace of the awkwardness Lovett was feeling evident in his demeanor.

“I thought it’d be better than stumbling in on your roommate.” He stepped in and tugged Lovett’s coat off his shoulders, and Lovett tried to relax into it; he thought of Tommy touching his shoulder and immediately pushed the memory away. He grabbed Robert by his shirt in retaliation.

“You seem like a man trying to mend a broken heart,” Robert said conversationally among the rustling of shedding clothes, and if Lovett had been in the mood for it, the words would have had just the right kind of insightful irony to make him open up with a joke, perhaps let off a little steam before getting down to business. Lovett wasn’t in the mood.

“My heart is completely intact, nothing to mend here,” he said and pulled Robert down by the collar to press a bruising kiss to his mouth. His heart was going to stay that way too, that was the whole point of this evening’s sojourn.

He dropped to his knees before Robert could think of anything more to say and hoped it would silence his own mind.

* * *

“Oh, why didn’t I stay home today,” Lovett said for perhaps the eleventh time. It wasn’t only the hangover - the deck rolled precariously beneath their feet, and even though Tommy had instructed him to keep his eyes on the horizon to help with the nausea, Lovett felt so bad that Favreau had to be out in the rain writing down the data, with Tommy steady at the wheel. He had his forehead pressed against the cold pane of glass, eyes fixed on the damn horizon, and pretended that complaining made him feel better. “I could have been staring at numbers from the comfort of my own bed instead.”

Favreau had been quiet all morning - Lovett knew that he at least had to suspect what he had been up to the night before, but he was too much of a gentleman to mention it. Perhaps it was a little uncharitable of Lovett to think it was only decorum that kept Favreau from mentioning anything - he _ was  _ Lovett’s best friend, after all. Jon and Jon, peas in a pod. But anyway, Favreau wasn’t the problem, the problem was Lovett and - speaking of the devil - Tommy, who was turning towards him and saying, “Hey, it looks like Favs is trying to get our attention out there, Lovett.”

Lovett groaned out loud, but didn’t move. He sensed Tommy moving instead, and that had him straightening up, for fear that maybe Tommy’d try to touch his shoulder again. Defiantly, Lovett raised his chin to meet Tommy’s gaze and found that his eyes seemed to have caught somewhere by Lovett’s collar. Self-conscious, Lovett raised a hand to his throat, but then Tommy’s gaze snapped up and he said, “Here.”

Confused, Lovett blinked down at the small, gray bundle Tommy presented to him. He touched the coarse wool and realized it was a pair of gloves.

“It’s cold out there,” Tommy said, like the gift needed that sort of explanation. “I noticed you don’t- I mean yesterday you seemed a little chilly, so I thought-”

“Thank you,” Lovett said, managing to press the words out around the lump in his throat. He carefully put them on, the gray, woollen fingerless gloves Tommy had gotten for him because he thought he was cold. It was a practical gift, it would make taking notes out there in the wind a whole lot easier, and Lovett would bet Tommy did this sort of thing all the time. To his friends.

He wanted to think that the gloves signified more than just Tommy making sure Lovett wasn’t going to lose his fingers to frostbite. But he wasn’t prepared to examine that particular want, so he just nodded at Tommy and stumbled out the door quick, before either of them could say anything more.


	4. To go out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I shall never get you put together entirely, / Pieced, glued, and properly jointed._  
>  \- Sylvia Plath, Colossus

One chilly October morning with the wind coming in from the southeast with a ferocity that threatened to tear away any badly moored boats, Tommy didn’t meet them at the dock. Lovett stood around, stomping his feet to keep the blood flowing as Favreau went to the harbormaster to ask for a telephone to contact the Coast Guard. There was a pressure behind Lovett’s eyes, not a headache yet but still a promise of pain, and he wished that the loud clinking sound of the wind slamming the ropes of a mast against metal would stop.

When Favreau came back at long last, a short-fused Lovett barked out a terse: “Well?”

“Some kind of operation, they needed every available man,” Favreau said. “He’ll be with us tomorrow again, they said.”

“All right,” Lovett said. “You go start the engine and I’ll cast off.”

He thought that his use of nautical parlance would have had Favreau jumping with joy and obeying with speed, but instead he remained still with his arms crossed.

“They’ve issued a storm warning,” he said. “Looks like the wind will be picking up all day.”

“This is exactly the kind of stuff we’re here for,” Lovett said with an impatient wave of his hand. “The more data, the more _ varied  _ the data, the better the database will be. Come on, you know Tommy’s just a bonus, it was always meant to be just you and me out there.”

“Yeah,” Favreau said and smiled a little. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay.”

In the end the storm didn’t hit them like Lovett had imagined it would, a dark thing overtaking them all at once. Instead it crept up, the waves cresting higher and higher while Lovett had one arm wound around the railing as he took notes so he wouldn’t fall over as Favreau navigated the waters, skillfully keeping them in the trough of the sea. Lovett’s fingers went numb with cold, despite Tommy’s gift.

Between the crashing of the waves against the hull and the howling wind, it took him a while to realize Favreau was shouting something. Lovett paused his writing and pushed his cap up like it would help him hear, and tried to make out the words.

“-head back!”

Instead of trying to outscream the wind, Lovett unhooked his arm from the railing to give Favreau a thumbs up. In that moment, because of course the universe wanted to give Lovett the middle finger, a huge wave made contact and hewed the boat sideways with such force that his foot slipped on the wet deck.

Lovett was thrown against the railing with enough force to knock the air out of him, and he didn’t know he’d hit his head before he realized it wasn’t water that was obscuring his vision, it was just swimming. The black spots threatened to overwhelm him and it was pure, gut-wrenching instinct that had him scrambling for something to hold onto.

Afterwards, Lovett could remember only snatches - Favreau yelling, someone hauling him bodily ashore, the heaving motion that came not from a rocking boat but by a car taking the turns too fast, and then- then blinking his eyes open, expecting Favreau but seeing Tommy.

“When’d you get here?” Lovett managed to get out, despite his dry throat and slurred words. Tommy was frowning; his forehead lined with a neat column of wrinkles.

“You hit your head,” Tommy said, unhelpfully. Lovett had a little trouble bringing his face into focus; there was a spot on the back of his head that was hurting something fierce.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he said, and God, did he really sound like that? His voice hoarse and his tone whiny, absolutely horrible. Tommy’s mouth twitched into a smile anyway, even if his frown didn’t budge an inch. It made him look slightly deranged. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Tommy gave a loud huff of irritation, and that at least Lovett could understand.

“He seems to be just fine,” someone said, and when Lovett craned his neck, he could see Favreau sitting on a chair by the wall of the - oh, this was a hospital room, which explained the smell of antiseptic dryness and the scratchy gown he was wearing.

“That’s not the point,” Tommy said tersely, and Lovett hadn’t ever heard him sound so angry - but the anger was controlled, kept tight against his chest and only coming out in the cadence of his voice. “You knew there was a storm warning and you still went out!”

Lovett closed his eyes because the headache was annoyingly persistent, and it didn’t help to look at the tense set of Tommy’s shoulders.

“That’s our job,” he said.

“And my job is to keep you safe!” Tommy snapped back.

Lovett’s eyes opened and did his best to sit up, despite the flash of pain it sent through his skull.

“We can take care of ourselves!” he said, uncomfortably aware that his current situation belied his words. To recover, he tacked on: “We never asked for your protection, Vietor!”

Tommy had that unfortunate New England complexion, which meant that every heightened feeling turned his cheeks crimson. His entire face burned red - in anger, Lovett supposed - and he looked like he’d been punched. He drew himself up to his full height and glowered.

“But you have it,” he said, and Lovett could tell he was fighting to keep his voice even and low. It rasped uncomfortably against Lovett’s consciousness, sparking something that he didn’t want to examine too closely.

“I think we need to let Lovett rest, now that he's awake,” Favreau said, and it was only after years of knowing him that Lovett could pick out the note of discomfort in his voice. He kept it smooth, like his facial expression.

“Yeah,” Tommy said and it took him a second to tear his eyes away from Lovett, cheeks still visibly burning.

Lovett waved his hand and slumped back, to signal that it didn't matter to him either way. Favreau smiled as he got to his feet, his tan overcoat that he hadn't bothered to take off rustling with the movement, and walked over to Lovett’s bedside. Lovett didn't flinch, though it was a near thing, when Favreau leaned closer and squeezed his shoulder. They didn't usually touch, and that was how Lovett knew he really meant it when Favreau said, “I was worried about you, buddy. Glad you're okay.”

“Right as rain,” Lovett quipped, because a little weather based humour never failed to cheer Favreau up. He did laugh at that, a pleased little chuckle that made Lovett’s lips quirk up in an answering smile. 

It disappeared when Favreau, lowering his voice, added, “Ease up on Tommy, he didn’t take this so well."

_ Ease up?  _ Lovett echoed in the privacy of his own mind. It wasn’t like he’d been hard on him - he never went all out on Tommy, he always reigned himself in, bit his tongue, afraid that he’d slip up in the heat of the moment and say something he could never take back. He’d known from the start that with Tommy, once you crossed the line, you could never go back.

Before he could explain any of this to Favreau in not so many words, Favreau had clapped him on the shoulder, gently, and turned on his heel to sweep out of the hospital room.

Lovett pressed the tip of his tongue against his front teeth and braced himself for Tommy walking over and touching him as well. He hoped his face was schooled into a neutral expression, but he had no way of knowing, except- except Tommy had fixed him with a look that Lovett couldn’t read. Lovett saw his hand twitch, an aborted movement that caught his eye, and then, without coming closer, Tommy turned and followed Favreau out without so much as a goodbye.

Lovett felt his anxiety rupture, like a punctured balloon, and suffuse his body with a thrumming sense of being left hanging. Tommy not touching him was precisely what he’d wished for and yet he felt cheated somehow, like something had been left unsaid.

* * *

Maybe something _ had  _ been left unsaid, because as soon as Lovett had bullied the nurse into giving him back his clothes and releasing him from the hospital and sending the bill to the Coast Guard, he hailed a cab and told the driver Tommy’s address.

His heart beat uncomfortably in his chest, but Lovett supposed that was inevitable. He could control it, he could control himself; Tommy didn’t need to know how Lovett had reacted to the tone of his voice, when he’d said his job was to keep them safe.  Tommy’s voice had broken a little, like it was personal and pertained to Lovett specifically. Lovett needed to know what that was about, couldn’t live with the uncertainty. His whole job was to, if not eliminate uncertainties, then at least predict the most probable outcome.

Lovett shouldered through the insistent worried mess of his thoughts and bolted up the stairs two at a time, before whatever foolhardy courage that possessed him decided to leave, and knocked on the door. He sucked in a deep breath and held it, heard approaching footsteps and then the sound of a deadbolt being pushed aside. He let out the breath in an explosive burst just before the door opened, and he blinked up at Tommy, who was staring at him like he was the last person he’d been expecting.

“Can I come in?” Lovett said and walked past Tommy before he could answer, his heart in his throat and registering too late that Tommy was barefoot and in his shirtsleeves, completely unprepared to entertain guests. Lovett ought to just blame the head injury, see himself out immediately and see if he could catch up with the same cab he’d arrived with.

But Tommy closed the door behind him and even slid the deadbolt back in place, and suddenly Lovett’s mouth felt dry, like even if he knew what to say he’d be unable to utter it.

“What do you want, Lovett?” Tommy said, but he didn’t sound angry. More exasperated- or no. Defeated. Lovett swallowed, looked at Tommy’s bare feet like they were the most fascinating things on the planet. He curled his toes under Lovett’s scrutiny, folded them in under the pads of his feet, and the hairs on them were light.

“I just want to talk,” Lovett said, even though it wasn’t strictly speaking true. He wanted lots of things, but none that he could have, so he settled for talking. “We can do it out here in your hall if you want but I’m not leaving until-”

_ What? I confess my wanton needs, you tell me to go to hell, I promise to never talk to you again?  _ Lovett cleared his throat and raised his eyes to look at how Tommy had crossed his arms.

“We clear the air,” he finished, with much less panache than he’d started out with. Tommy heaved a closed-mouth sigh, Lovett saw the shirt buttons strain against his chest. 

“Favs told me this was- difficult for you,” Lovett said and made a gesture to encompass him, the both of them, the world. “But I’m fine. You knew I was fine. You blew a fuse about me bumping my head, but you do this for a job, and- I don’t get why.”

Tommy unfolded his arms to rub at his forehead. He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the veins on his pale forearm stood out with the movement, and Lovett felt like there was nowhere safe to rest his eyes. Tommy’s entire being was a minefield.

“Favs is an asshole,” Tommy muttered, which startled a laugh out of Lovett, a laugh that felt like the first breath of fresh air between them.

“Yeah he is,” Lovett agreed and shrugged off his coat and scarf, carelessly letting them fall in a heap on the floor. “But so am I. Spill, Vietor.”

Tommy sighed again, but this time the corner of his mouth twitched, and he showed Lovett the way to his living room.

It was small and tidy, though the tidiness seemed to stem not from Tommy’s sense of order but from a lack of possessions. Lovett had already spread out in his rented room at Mrs Nordstrom’s like a fungus, leaving knick-knacks and clothes everywhere, and he eyed the spartan air of this room curiously. But he shook himself out of it; he wasn’t here to critique Tommy’s sense of interior design.

He sat down in the indicated sofa while Tommy disappeared into his kitchen and emerged with two glasses and a bottle of bourbon that Lovett didn’t want to read the label of. It looked like it cost more than Lovett had gotten in grants since he graduated, and it smelled like someone had set fire to a root cellar. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth however, Lovett accepted the glass and let Tommy fill it up, dutifully, before he did the same to his own glass and sat down in an ottoman opposite Lovett, cozy by a bookshelf that seemed like it hadn’t been touched in ages.

They both raised the glasses to their mouths at the same time, but instead of taking a sip, Lovett said, “Some Dutch courage to go with that heritage, huh?”

He had the pleasure of seeing Tommy choke on his sip, coughing into his arm and his face turning a violent red.

“Fuck you,” Tommy said at last, but under the hoarseness of his voice was laughter, and Lovett grinned and lifted his bourbon in an ironic cheers.

“I aim to please.”

“No you don’t,” Tommy said, but he sounded matter-of-fact, almost fond. Lovett inclined his head and for once in his life, said nothing. Willing Tommy to keep talking.

Another sigh, a proper sip of the bourbon, and then gripping the glass loosely between long fingers, Tommy did keep talking.

“Three years ago, the nor’easter laid waste to the entire damn coast,” he said and took another gulp of the bourbon. Lovett didn’t blame him; he remembered reading the news about the Great Appalachian Storm of ‘50, hell, he remembered the power outages in New York, and the businessman he came across who was furious that La Guardia was flooded.  “It was the worst disaster in recent history, and everyone was out doing their job, saving lives - except me.”

Lovett frowned, looking at Tommy from under his lashes, but took a sip of his own bourbon instead of saying anything. He frowned deeper; it _ tasted  _ of burnt cellar.

Tommy pulled his lower lip in between his teeth for a second, eyes downcast, before he continued, “I was- I’d been visiting family, and by the time I made it back-”

His breath shuddered on the inhale, and Lovett’s lungs ached in sympathy. He wanted to shift closer, but the distance between them was unbridgeable, so he stayed put.

“People had died,” Tommy said quietly, looking up and at Lovett for the first time since he’d sat down. His eyes were oddly blank, but the twist to his mouth spoke of a devastation that Lovett could only guess at. “They died, and I did nothing to stop it, or to help, and I-”

Another deep breath, Tommy’s eyes flitting away, fixing on something behind Lovett’s head, and Lovett gripped his glass tight, took another sip just to feel it burn on his tongue. Tommy’s voice wavered but didn’t break.

“I wasn’t there. And I oughta have been.”

“Tommy,” Lovett said, and saw Tommy’s eyes focus on him, saw the way the light hit them and made them almost colorless. “I promise I won’t die out on the sea without you present.”

“Promise you won’t die at all and we have a deal,” Tommy said somberly, but there was a light dancing in those colorless eyes. He shifted, his legs canting open as he rested his elbow on his knee, glass of bourbon dangling carelessly in his grip, and Lovett wanted so much to see something inviting in the way he tilted his head. The flutter of his fair eyelashes and the parting of his reddened lips looked for all the world like he was playing coy.

But Lovett didn’t dare read into it. Like Emily Dickinson had said, hope might be the thing with feathers, but he’d flown too close to the sun a couple of times and he’d just promised Tommy not to fall and drown. So Lovett quirked his lips in a smile that he’d been told was charming, drained his glass, and declared the contents undrinkable, so that Tommy would grin and protest, and maybe shift his body back, close his knees.

Tommy did grin but he didn’t protest, and Lovett thought they were going to be all right, with time. He’d get over it, and Tommy would be none the wiser. 

And yet, Lovett felt there was something in the air between them when he started to see himself out and Tommy followed him to the door, awkward but accommodating while Lovett put the coat on and said his goodbyes.

He’d looked like he wanted to ask Lovett to stay, but Lovett wasn’t ready to let the hope perch in his soul. Maybe they were about to cross a line, he and Tommy, but Lovett didn’t want to take the step only to have to go back.


	5. Jimmy McCarthy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And how will your night dances / Lose themselves. In mathematics?_  
>  \- Sylvia Plath, The Night Dances

Things went back to normal after Lovett’s near-concussion - as normal as things could be, working on a floating weather station as winter closed in. Tommy, however, tended to hover while Lovett was out on deck, and Lovett wished he wouldn’t because it was very difficult to ignore how much he wanted to touch him with intent when they constantly bumped elbows by accident.

The line was crossed, Lovett was sure of it, but he didn’t quite know on which side they stood, if they were on the same side, how carefully he ought to walk it. Something was going to have to happen, one way or the other, but Lovett wasn’t brave enough to take responsibility. He had no way of gauging Tommy’s intentions, and his own were far from honorable.

When October turned into November, an envelope was slipped in through Mrs Nordstrom’s mail slot addressed to Misters Lovett and Favreau. It contained an invitation to a Coast Guard function that was signed with Murphy’s name but was sure to be Tommy’s fault.

“I hate him,” Lovett muttered and kicked his foot up on the coffee table, now that Mrs Nordstrom wasn’t in the room and couldn’t tell him off. “I’m not going.”

“No you don’t, and yes you are,” Favreau said amiably and pushed his foot off the table by knocking into his knee. “It’s not even formal evening wear required, half dress is fine.”

“A black tie better be fine,” Lovett muttered rebelliously. “Tuxes make me look like a penguin.”

* * *

Penguin or no, Lovett accompanied an impeccably dressed Favreau in his less impeccable suit that was just a little too long in the sleeves. While wearing a hat made Favreau look sophisticated and put-together, Lovett always felt like a kid playing dress-up with it, and he kept pushing the brim up to see, and then back down when he felt uncomfortable.

The occasion was the relaunch of an icebreaker that had been put up over the summer for repairs. The entire Coast Guard with their wives and children seemed to be there, together with some of the Navy and a whole slew of engineers, all gathered in the magazine building that apparently made for a good place to host a party. Lots of space to put the tables up, Lovett supposed. The enormous, blunt ship loomed in the massive space, a monster of metal towering over the tables, and the wind coming in from the sea was cold. Favreau soon excused himself to go back and get their coats, which they’d left at the entrance like idiots, and Lovett wanted the coat but wasn’t keen on navigating the crowd alone.

“Good to have an icebreaker so ready at hand,” Lovett kept saying when he introduced himself to a group, and it garnered a laugh every time. This was like every terrible academic conference he’d been to where he had to schmooze, except without the possibility of furthering his research. Lovett tried to imagine Tommy in the place of one of these higher-up officers with a smiling wife on his arm, and found it difficult. Tommy was too hands-on, had deliberately chosen a life where he could be of use in the most literal sense.

He didn’t stay and chat to anyone in particular. He felt like he was looking for someone, but he was still unprepared to come face to face with Tommy - maybe because it took him a second to recognize him, clothed as he was in full dress blues that finally made his incredible posture seem, if not natural, then at least like it belonged.

“Look at you, handsome,” Lovett said, before he could stop himself, right here in the middle of a crowd where anyone could hear. The thing was, it was true. The uniform ought to have looked ridiculous, but the double breasted jacket emphasized the cut of Tommy’s waist, the insignia on his chest and collar flattered the breadth of his shoulders, the white, peaked cap put his cheekbones in high relief, and the navy color of the uniform brought out the blue in Tommy’s eyes.

It was unfair, and Lovett loathed how much he liked the faint blush that spread over those high cheekbones when Tommy registered what he’d said.

“I’m glad you came,” Tommy said. “I wasn’t sure you were gonna.”

Lovett’s eyes were drawn to where Tommy’s clasped hands had dissolved into fidgeting. He wasn’t wearing the white gloves Lovett had seen some of the other officers wear. He determinedly lifted his gaze again.

“Favreau made me,” he said, but quickly added: “But I’m glad you’re here too. A friendly face in a sea of strangers, makes it a lot easier to, you know, brave the waves or whatever it is you Coast Guardians call it.”

Tommy grinned at ‘Coast Guardians’, which was good, but Lovett’s gaze slipped down again. Trying to lock eyes with Tommy felt like trying to push the antipole sides of magnets together and Lovett didn’t know why, he only knew it was a little difficult to breathe. Tommy shifted, like he was having trouble too, and reached out a hand. It didn’t land on Lovett, but it hovered just by his elbow, a leading, protective gesture as Tommy said, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“How gracious, Lieutenant Vietor. Didn’t know you were hosting,” Lovett said, unable to stop himself yet again.

“Lieutenant junior grade,” Tommy reminded him with a laugh, and Lovett let him shepherd him through the crowd by almost touching his elbow. Lovett caught a glimpse of Favreau with two sets of coats slung over his arm, deep in conversation with - Lovett thought it might have been the woman in the reception, who’d shown them in to Murphy’s office. Lovett didn’t particularly want to interrupt.

They found a waiter and grabbed a champagne flute each from the tray. Tommy lifted his in a quiet toast, and Lovett clinked his against it with an obnoxiously loud sound.

“Mazel tov,” he said, equally obnoxiously, and that was the moment when a bell rang, urging the gathered guests to silence.

As Lovett listened to the speech by some head engineer or other, he was more preoccupied with the warmth radiating from Tommy, standing so close. He’d blushed when Lovett had called him handsome and sure, he might be modest, but calling someone handsome didn’t mean anything unless you wanted it to mean something.

Despite everything, Lovett was a scientist. He had a hypothesis, and now he only had to test it to see if it held true. He half turned, to make sure Tommy noticed, and threw his head back to swallow all of the champagne in one go. He wiped his mouth demonstrably as the speaker asked them all to keep a respectful distance from the ship in its dock as they prepared the launch, and then, with the groaning of metal filling their ears, Lovett touched the back of Tommy’s hand.

He felt Tommy freeze, his posture straightening up even further, which Lovett hadn’t thought possible. He tried to shift away immediately, shame coiling hot in his gut, but before he could, Tommy gripped Lovett’s wrist, under his cuff. His palm was broad and warm, the calluses scraping against the soft skin on the inside of Lovett’s wrist and sending a shiver down Lovett’s spine when he looked Tommy in the eyes again, finally. Tommy licked his lips, his cheeks an ever darker pink now, his light eyelashes an odd contrast when he blinked.

“I still have some of that undrinkable bourbon at home,” he murmured, just loud enough for Lovett to hear among the excited chatter of the crowd as they watched the icebreaker start to move toward water.

“If I come home with you,” Lovett said, and swallowed, looked down at Tommy’s mouth for a fraction of a second before he looked back into his eyes. “It won’t be to drink your undrinkable bourbon.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Tommy said and smiled, shyly.

While the Wind-class icebreaker USCGC _ Edisto  _ returned to the sea under thunderous applause, Lovett went to steal his coat from Favreau and excuse himself, and Tommy to hail them a cab. Favreau was only half-able to tear his attention away to hear Lovett’s excuses of not feeling so good, which was just as well, really. For all his talking, Lovett wasn’t a great liar.

Like the last time he’d been in a cab on his way to Tommy’s, Lovett’s heart was in his throat, but this time it was due to knowing Tommy was right there with him, well over the line. Even if he kept his eyes forward and chatted evenly with the talkative driver, with the kind of level-headedness Lovett could never hope to achieve.

Lovett insisted on splitting the bill, and Tommy begrudgingly allowed it, though he left Lovett to take care of the change while he unlocked the door to his building. The stairway to Tommy’s door had never seemed so long, and by the time Tommy unlocked the door to his apartment, the thrill of the moment had all but evaporated, leaving Lovett nauseous with nervosity. He hadn’t misread the situation, he couldn’t have, but still the variables made his head spin. Would they be able to look at each other in the morning? Would Tommy _ want  _ to look at him in the morning?

They were inside Tommy’s hall now, and Lovett wanted to voice his concern that maybe they didn’t know what they were doing when Tommy took a step closer and gently lifted the hat off Lovett’s head.

Lovett blinked.

“I uh, I like your curls,” Tommy murmured, and oh, that was the heel of his hand on Lovett’s cheek, that was his fingers tangling in his hair, and fuck crossing the line, Tommy had just scuffed out the line with his boot. 

“Tommy,” Lovett said, and he didn’t mean to sound like he was begging, but he was, begging Tommy to be the responsible one because Lovett couldn’t be, not in this situation. He drew in a breath and kept going, “Are you sure about this?”

Tommy’s hand stilled but didn’t withdraw, and Lovett chanced a look at Tommy’s face. He looked concerned, frowning and intent, painfully earnest.

“I think so,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer. “I mean I- I care about you, but if- if that’s not what you want then-”

“Oh my god,” Lovett choked out and grabbed the front of Tommy’s uniform, the golden buttons cold under his hands. “Of course that’s what I want, have you even _ looked  _ at yourself? I just- Tommy, what the fuck. How is this something that _ you  _ want?”

Tommy’s frown softened out into a sad smile.

“I’ve heard all the jokes about the Navy,” he said, eyes traveling over Lovett’s face in a way that was both uncomfortable and intensely reassuring. “Only I didn’t think they were very funny.”

“Yeah no shit,” Lovett said, grinning despite himself, and let his hands travel up Tommy’s chest. There was a lot of chest to cover. “I bet you wanted to tell them, the Coast Guard does it better anyway!”

Tommy breathed out a laugh, but he seemed distracted. His gaze didn’t want to settle, and Lovett could understand that; the warmth of Tommy’s hand on his neck was very distracting. But Lovett didn’t quite dare to want yet, couldn’t let his mind wander. That was a flood he knew he couldn’t stop. They still stood some inches apart, and Tommy bit his lower lip, like he had to stop himself from saying something. 

_ Open the floodgates,  _ Lovett thought, daring Tommy to do it. He stepped closer, so close that he had one foot in between Tommy’s and had to brace his elbows on his stomach so he wouldn’t lose his balance. Tommy gave a shuddering exhale, dropped Lovett’s hat to the floor, and grabbed Lovett’s face with both hands before he leaned down to kiss him.

Opening his mouth was instinct on Lovett’s part, tilting his head back a natural reaction. But Tommy didn’t take advantage and kept his lips chastely pressed against the corner of Lovett’s open mouth, while Lovett shifted against him. Lovett circled his arms around Tommy’s neck and and pushed his hands from his face so he had to grab Lovett by the waist instead because, God, he was so tall, and Lovett was going to get a crick in his neck real fast if they stayed like this. He pushed up on his toes, slid his mouth against Tommy’s, and Tommy made a noise in his throat and parted his lips, seemingly out of surprise.

The heat burst across Lovett’s tongue like tasting a sip of coffee in the morning. He chased it eagerly, instinctively, and touched the tip of his tongue to Tommy’s lower lip. Then there was the wet warmth of Tommy’s tongue pushing back, and Tommy’s grip on Lovett’s waist tightened, pulling him up and closer.

With the movement, Lovett inadvertently pressed his thigh up between Tommy’s, and he felt the unmistakable hardening of his cock through the layers of clothes. Lovett moaned, unreservedly, and the sound was muffled by Tommy’s tongue in his mouth, which made Lovett’s own cock twitch. He closed his teeth around Tommy’s lower lip, tugged at it as he settled back on his feet, before he let go.

Tommy made a broken sound, like parting with Lovett hurt. He still had his hands on Lovett’s waist, and he rested his forehead against his too, the movement pushing the brim of his peaked hat back.

“Bed,” Lovett said and blinked up into Tommy’s eyes, saw how blown his pupils were, and felt heat coil in his gut in response.

“Yeah,” Tommy breathed. Lovett stretched up on his toes again to sweep the white cap off his head and throw it to the side. It made Tommy grin, and something fluttered in Lovett’s stomach beside the arousal, but then Tommy tightened his grip on Lovett’s waist and they were stumbling into Tommy’s bedroom, and Lovett couldn’t even take in the surroundings because Tommy had pushed Lovett down on his bed to start unbuttoning his own uniform and-

Lovett breathed in, fast and sharp. He remembered all the officers at the function, thought of Tommy in their place, and he said, “You’re not afraid that, uh, Senator McCarthy is going to materialize out of the shadows and have you fired?”

Tommy’s fingers stilled on the buttons. He looked down at Lovett, and he was breathing heavily too. Lovett was mesmerized by the heaving of his chest, the way the crisp fabric strained.

“I’m willing to risk it.”

His voice was low and gravelly, and sent a zip of heat down Lovett’s spine, the sound of it enough without him considering the actual implication of the words. He dragged his eyes up to Tommy’s, but Tommy had abandoned his buttons and moved to him, sinking down to his knees at Lovett’s feet. Lovett felt his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach, and he curled his toes inside his dress shoes.

“Lovett,” Tommy said, his voice low and serious. “Jon. Please, can I?”

With absolutely no input from his brain, Lovett canted his legs open, leaned back on his hands and said, breathlessly, “Yeah.”

Tommy was in this, as he was in everything else, steadfast and diligent. He undid Lovett’s belt and buttons, gently urged his hips up so he could shimmy the pants and underwear down past his knees. Lovett’s untucked shirt draped over his naked thighs, providing a strange frame for his cock, obscenely flushed and erect, almost painfully hard. Tommy didn’t give him much time to observe it however, because he settled his hands on Lovett’s knees, licked his lips, and, without preamble, put his mouth on it.

Lovett made a noise, high in his throat, and he had to lift his hand, put it on Tommy’s head to brace himself. Tommy gave a low hum and buffed at Lovett’s hand with his head like a dog, and Lovett wasn’t going to think about dogs at a time like this, so he closed his eyes and closed his fist in Tommy’s hair.

A shiver seemed to ripple across Tommy’s shoulders and back as he groaned, a wash of hot air over Lovett’s cock, and then he swallowed him down. Lovett’s thighs tensed, his stomach clenched, the hand still in the bedsheets gripped them so hard a muscle in Lovett’s back popped. His head lolled back and he wished fervently he wouldn’t come embarrassingly quickly because he wanted to feel this for as long as possible.

Tommy’s hands on Lovett’s knees and Lovett’s hand in Tommy’s hair were the only reasons Lovett managed to keep still, to let Tommy work him over without him bucking up into the wet, welcoming heat of his mouth, but Tommy did _ things _ with his _ tongue, _ and his spit dripped down Lovett’s shaft when he pulled back to breathe, and Lovett wanted to die a little, it felt so filthy and so, so good. When Lovett looked down, he could see the fine cut of Tommy’s nose, how his eyes were closed in concentration, how his lips were wet and red from what he’d been doing.

“Tommy,” Lovett panted after what felt like an eternity and was only a moment after Tommy had leaned back in. “Tommy, I’m absolutely going to come real soon, so you uh, you might want to-”

Tommy’s eyelashes fluttered when he looked up, and his gaze was a little unfocused when it settled on Lovett. Lovett rubbed his temple soothingly with his thumb, buried his fingers in his hair and saw his eyes close before Tommy pursed his lips, made a sound, and hollowed his cheeks.

The orgasm unfurled from Lovett’s toes and traveled up his body in a cresting wave, made his scalp tingle and his thoughts white out. Tommy didn’t move until Lovett finished, but then he slid off carefully, swallowed, and pressed a kiss to his softening cock. He sat back on his haunches and had the audacity to look a little embarrassed.

“Fuck,” Lovett breathed when he regained his ability speak. “Fuck, Tommy, get that damn uniform off, and fast.”

Tommy obeyed, and Lovett got rid of his own clothes in what seemed a post-orgasmic haze, and together they tumbled naked onto Tommy’s bed and Lovett told Tommy, in no uncertain terms, that he would do whatever he asked for, for as long as he wanted.

“Kiss me?” Tommy mumbled, voice hoarse and hands traveling aimlessly up and down Lovett’s body where Lovett was half-draped across him. Lovett had to blink in confusion before he did just that, leaned down and kissed Tommy with abandon, not caring that he could taste himself and that their stubble grated against each other with every move. He trailed his hand down the vast expanse of Tommy’s warm body until he could curl a hand around his leaking cock and make Tommy bite back a groan.

Tommy kept making noises, short gasps, soft moans, and aborted words. Lovett drank them all up eagerly, haphazardly pressing kisses to Tommy’s mouth and jaw and bared throat. The flex of muscle beneath him when Tommy strained under his touch, the ripple of freckled skin when Tommy shivered, it was all a treasure for Lovett to uncover. He scraped his teeth against the vein on the side of Tommy’s neck, and Tommy grunted, bent his leg at the knee and grasped Lovett’s back with a calloused hand. The other found its way into Lovett’s curls, his palm fitting along the curve of Lovett’s skull, and Lovett wanted to tell him he could pull if he wanted.

“Jon,” Tommy gasped, and came in Lovett’s hand. His entire body tensed with it, taut as a rope, and Lovett pressed his open mouth against the hollow of Tommy’s throat until he unwound and settled back onto the sheets.

“Petition to do that again, several times,” Lovett murmured and dragged his soiled hand up Tommy’s stomach. Tommy shivered again and twitched, like the touch tickled.

“Motion moves to the floor,” he said and heaved himself up on his elbow and then over Lovett, pressing him down into the bed. “Motion seconded, and-”

“It passes,” Lovett said with a grin, as Tommy kissed him on the mouth again.

* * *

Lovett woke up to the insistent ringing of a telephone, and then the warm weight of Tommy shifting to get out of bed. He groaned, loudly, but Tommy still left. He padded out of his bedroom on silent feet, and Lovett could only hear a vague murmur when he answered the telephone. He wasn’t about to leave the sanctuary of the bed, so he settled back and took the opportunity to hog the single pillow completely.

They’d fallen asleep, limbs entangled, but Lovett had a feeling they hadn’t slept through the night. After a moment he shifted under the covers, stuck his head out to try to find a timepiece somewhere. His eyes fell on the alarm clock with brass bells on Tommy’s nightstand and it showed half past ten - and the absence of light through the crack in the curtains told Lovett it was still post meridiem.

Something rattled the window pane, and Lovett froze for a second before he realized it was the wind, bringing with it a smattering of rain. He shifted again when he heard Tommy approach, gave into the urge to sweep his hand over the wild nest of curls on his head. Tommy appeared in the doorway, completely naked, and while Lovett usually would have loved to rake his eyes over him, maybe smile and say something suggestive, the frown Tommy was wearing kept Lovett’s eyes glued to his face, even as he started to gather up his underclothes. The wind was still rattling the window panes, and Lovett could hear it whine in the chimney.

“I have to go,” Tommy said seriously. “An oil tanker ran into a shoal. She’s stuck and there’s a risk of a breach if the water pulls her loose with too much force.”

A violent, irrational urge to pull Tommy back under the covers and not let him go almost overtook Lovett. He clenched his fists in the bedding instead. It wasn’t personal, he tried to tell himself. This was Tommy’s job, and it was important. This didn’t mean Tommy didn’t want to crawl back under the covers, just that he couldn’t.

“Well, shit,” Lovett said as neutrally as he could and eyed his own crumpled suit on the floor of Tommy’s bedroom. He shuddered at the thought of pulling on the dress shirt and something turned over in his stomach, an ominous worry that he couldn’t quite place. Tommy was already out by the door, pulling on his boots, when Lovett emerged from his bedroom in only his sleeved undershirt and unbuttoned slacks.

“Hey,” Lovett said and pushed his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t fiddle with the hem of his shirt or pull at his hangnails. “What if you didn’t have to go?”

Tommy had just pulled on his coat and stilled in the process of flipping up his collar. He looked at Lovett, and Lovett knew it was ugly, the small selfish animal that had made its home in his gut, but he couldn’t help it.

“It’s all hands on deck, Lovett,” Tommy said and turned his collar up with one hand. Lovett wanted to grab him by it. “Always ready, that’s what it says on the crest.” 

_ What happened to calling me Jon? _ Lovett thought. The selfish animal was transforming into something that felt a whole lot like panic, clawing at the walls of its nest. “I get that you have a chip on your shoulder or whatever, but the sea isn’t going to knock it off, Tommy, it’s going to fucking drown you!”

“That’s what it says on the crest,” Tommy repeated, stubborn, and with a spot of color rising on his cheeks. “The real motto is ‘you have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.’”

“That’s fucking terrible,” Lovett said, to keep the animal down, to keep from doing something ridiculous, like cry. “You better be back.”

“I’ll leave the key with you,” Tommy said with a small smile, and in that moment Lovett wished he could hate him instead. The sound of the door slamming shut made him flinch.

Of course Tommy would take the first out presented to him - Lovett knew himself, he knew what he was like, thank you very much - no matter how how legitimate the out.  _ This is what you get,  _ Lovett thought. _ Well, whatever. Short and sweet, that’s how it goes.  _ Tommy was always going to leave, save the world and find someone to settle down with and become a productive member of society, probably. It just stung, was all, Tommy rushing out like putting his life on the line was infinitely more preferable than being with Lovett.


	6. Semper Paratus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A dog-faced sea. / The sun sinks under Boston, bloody red._  
>  \- Sylvia Plath, Point Shirley

Lovett spent approximately eleven minutes trying to occupy himself at Tommy’s after the door had slammed shut. After ten, he’d washed his face, buttoned his pants, and found something to snack on in the kitchen. Then he looked at the grandfather clock in the living room, cursed out loud, and used the eleventh minute to phone Mrs Nordstrom’s with Tommy’s telephone.

“Hi, Mrs Nordstrom, sorry to call so late! Please put Jon on, will you?” Lovett said in his best, brightest faux jovial voice that turned on a dime to a rough barking. “Favs? Fuck, man, meet me at the Coast Guard station by the wharf as soon as you can, and I mean ‘we don’t have time for coffee in the morning’ soon, don’t even answer me, just put on your coat and go!”

He threw the phone down and went to rifle through Tommy’s closet. He pulled out and on a grey knitted sweater that looked comfortable, before putting on his shoes and overcoat in a hurry, already half-out the door. He just about remembered using Tommy’s key to lock up after him, and then he rushed out into the street to hail a cab.

He’d been stomping his feet outside, pressed against the side of the Coast Guard building, for at least ten minutes before a frazzled Favreau stepped out of a cab. The wind grabbed ahold of him and tore at his clothes, forcing him to put a hand on his hat. Lovett had left his at Tommy’s.

“What part of ‘as soon as you can’ passed you by?” Lovett said and detached from the wall. “I’m fucking freezing out here, get us inside!”

“Lovett, what the hell?” Favreau said and squinted at him. He looked sleepy, but then, he usually did, that was just the way his face looked. “What’s happening?”

“The storm has all hands on deck,” Lovett said. “Which means your lady friend from the party-”

“Emily,” Favreau said patiently.

“-Emily, she’s probably in there, and I need you to talk to her and let us in to help.”

Favreau tried to ask more questions but Lovett huffed and pushed at him, and Favreau had known him for long enough to know that it was easier to just do what he wanted first and ask questions later. So when they knocked on the Coast Guard door, they were armed with Favreau’s easy-going attitude and sleepy smile, instead of Lovett’s pent-up prickliness.

Lovett’s prediction came true - Emily was behind the reception desk, bleary-eyed and with her hair put up in an unfashionable but quick bun. Lovett was further proven right by how her eyes caught on Favreau and lit up.

“Jonathan!” she said - and wasn’t that forward of her, Lovett thought uncharitably. “Why- what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Emily,” Favreau said warmly. “We’re just, uh-”

“Did Vietor go out yet?” Lovett interjected. Emily blinked and looked to him, lowering her well-shaped eyebrows.

“They’ve all gone out, I’m just about the only one left to monitor the damn radio!” She paused and looked contrite. “I’m sorry. My mother taught me not to swear.”

“We don’t mind,” Lovett said. “Hell, swearing puts us at ease. Can you please keep us updated? What’s happening out there?”

Some sincerity must have bled through Lovett’s voice, because Emily’s expression softened and she nodded. “Of course. Nothing much to tell right now though.”

“All right, so we’ll just-” Favreau made a vague sweeping gesture toward the chairs lining the wall. Emily heaved a sigh and stood up.

“I was just out here to grab some paperwork, occupy my time.” She used her head to indicate the door behind her. “Why don’t you join me?”

And that was how Favreau and Lovett found themselves in the Coast Guard radio room, the radio frequency turned to 500 kc and transmitting an almost soothing static, with Emily, who soon abandoned her paperwork to chat with them. Favreau, true to form, soon dozed off despite a valiant effort to stay alert, which left a brief but awkward silence between the two remaining vigilants.

“So,” Lovett said. “I don’t usually inconvenience people quite like this but, uh, I just - I had a bad feeling about this situation, I guess.”

“I get it,” Emily surprised him by saying, touching a lock of hair that had worked its way out of the bun. “It’s terrible to be left behind, feeling useless.”

Lovett realized she was right. Maybe he could understand Tommy rushing off after all.  _ I oughta have been.  _

Lovett’s ma used to say that keeping someone in your thoughts would summon them. Superstitious nonsense, obviously, but that didn’t mean Lovett didn’t startle when the radio static burst to life with Tommy’s voice at that very moment.

_ “- more people than we can carry, we need another ship!” _

Favreau shook himself awake, and Lovett was on the literal edge of his seat. Emily competently reached for the mouthpiece, checked the frequency, and replied, “This is HQ. All available ships are out on the sea, you need to contact them for help.”

A hiss of static sent Lovett’s heart clawing its way out of his throat, but then Tommy’s voice:

_ “Can’t reach anyone else, the frequency’s jammed or else the transmitter's too weak. Tell ‘em if you hear from them!”  _ He rattled off his coordinates and Emily conscientiously wrote them down with a speed befitting her profession. For Lovett, the coordinates settled like fixed knowledge in his brain; they were only numbers. Numbers he knew. 42.335343, -70.864961 equals Tommy.

“We could go,” Favreau said, and Lovett had never wanted to kiss another man more in his life, which was really saying something. Favreau, looking rumpled and still a little sleepy, had his mouth set in a determined, flat line, and Lovett nodded to him.

“We have a boat,” Lovett confirmed. “We have the coordinates - this is like when, uh, the British fishermen set out to evacuate soldiers out of France, you know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know that I can officially sanction this, as a representative of the Coast Guard,” Emily said. Favreau’s face fell, but she grinned as she went on: “But you’re not with the Coast Guard - I can’t officially stop you from doing it either.”

Lovett tipped her a hat he wasn’t wearing, and Favreau laughed out loud.

* * *

They were already on their way out through the Main Boston Channel when the reality of what they were doing caught up with Lovett. So far they’d been buffered by the landmasses on either side, but as the mouth of the sea opened up, the waves deepened, and Lovett’s stomach dipped with the boat in the trough. He, who still stumbled on deck and couldn’t tell a beacon from a buoy, was going to help the goddamn Coast Guard. Favreau might have grown up around boats, but Lovett was a landlubber, head to dry boot, and he was probably going to have to get rescued himself, except all the saviors were busy out there already.  _ Fuck, no time for this kind of talk,  _ Lovett thought sternly to himself. _ You can panic later. _

Their boat, their trusty little research vessel _ Coleridge,  _ had started to feel like a kind of home to him during the past months though - she had accrued bits and pieces of him over time, his spare knitted cap hanging from a hook, Tommy’s gifted gloves tucked away in a compartment by the navigation panel - Lovett knew where the ropes were stowed, he knew to put away the fenders when they were away from the dock. He’d been out enough to be able to tell that this wasn’t even the worst weather they’d been out in - the waves had been higher when he’d fallen and hit his head, though that was perhaps not a memory Lovett ought to revisit right now.

They were both safely inside the cabin, the sound of the engine a steady drone that drowned out the rushing of the sea, and Favreau looked grim but competent where he kept his hands steady on the wheel. Lovett had gotten better at navigating, too. He had pinpointed Tommy’s coordinates, translated the fixed knowledge into a dot on the charts, but still it was a surprise when the massive shadow of an oil tanker appeared before them in the heaving sea.

“There,” Lovett said and pointed to the blinking pinpoint of a searchlight dipping in and out of view between waves. Favreau turned the wheel and reached up to flick on their own searchlight - something they hadn’t had to use yet. The beam of light was stark against the black of the sea and made the waves seem all the more intimidating, at least to Lovett. He fiddled with the radio until the chatter burst into the right hailing frequency, and Tommy’s voice sounded over the radio waves.

“RV Coleridge, _ what the hell are you guys doing here?” _

“We’re here to help!” Lovett replied, the relief of hearing Tommy’s voice making him light-headed and giddy. “We heard you’re reaching max capacity over there!”

“We can carry twelve people according to regulation,” Favreau supplied.

“Screw the regs, we can carry more than that,” Lovett added.

_ “Fucking- try to stay put, and I’ll come over to coordinate,”  _ was Tommy’s terse reply before he cut off the radio.

“I’ll go out and-” Lovett said and made a gesture before he checked that his cork life preserver was securely fastened. He went out.

He clung to the the railings all the way, squinting at the lash of rain and sea spray in his face - he was drenched in minutes, but that didn’t much matter. He saw people moving on the other ship but didn’t dare hope one of them was Tommy. They were indiscernible shapes even when they got close enough that Lovett could tell that they were yelling at him, though he couldn’t make out the words.

When the rope came flying towards him though, the meaning was unmistakable. Lovett managed to catch it on the first try, to his own astonishment, and then he quickly looped it around something sturdy and made a double half-hitch as fast as he could. The vessels were pulled closer, close enough for Lovett to make out that one of the men lined up was indeed Tommy, and he had to stomp down on his traitorous heart that threatened to make a pathetic breakaway. Tommy looked - he looked miserable and dutiful, eyebrows pulled low as he grabbed a colleague to yell something in their ear. Then Lovett’s heart jumped up his throat when Tommy grabbed the rope tethering the boats together and heaved himself across the yawning gulf between them, somehow managing to land on deck instead of being swallowed up by the vengeful sea.

Lovett grabbed his jacket before he could stop himself, to steady him and make sure he was really there, and Tommy grabbed his arm back.

“You-” Tommy said, but the rest of his words were snatched away by the wind. He pressed his lips together, and Lovett thought they seemed blue-tinged, but it was difficult to tell in the bright, cold searchlight, and he bent down to undo Lovett’s double half-hitch. Lovett watched him throw the rope back to the other ship, and then Tommy touched his arm again, urging him to follow, back across the heaving deck and into the cabin. The smell of salt water and wet clothes became thick fast in the cramped cabin, but Favreau smiled at them, reassuring as only he could be.

“Favs,” Tommy said somberly over the sound of the engine. “Now that you’re here, can you get us closer to the tanker? Not too close or we’ll get smashed against the side of it.”

“Gotcha,” Favreau said, and with a steadiness Lovett could only dream of, he steered their vessel closer to the dark shadow of the oil tanker.

With a dawning horror, Lovett realized that it was, in fact, only half an oil tanker. It had been torn off the shoal and the hull had not just been breached, it had been broken clean in two, and the bow of the ship was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly every dip of their own boat seemed more precarious, and Lovett felt a cold tendril of fear snake its way down his spine, threatening to paralyze him.

There was no time for panicking though; Tommy touched his arm again, and when Lovett looked at him it looked like it took all of Tommy’s willpower to say, “Will you help me out there?”

And of course Lovett wouldn’t say no, and that was how he helped Tommy secure the line going from the tanker to a raft and now to them, doing another dependable double half-hitch, and together they started to haul man after man across the heaving sea. Lovett knew for a fact that if he lived through this, his entire body would be in for a world of hurt, but in the moment he was numb, his limbs moving on autopilot while he helped the eighth man aboard, bracing his entire, drenched weight in his arms for a second before he was helped along the deck, to get under the deck with the others. He wondered, idly, how in the world they decided who went first out of all the people that had to be saved.

“Only two left,” someone shouted in Lovett’s ear, and he could honestly not tell who - everything was a jumble of rope and water and the world roiling around him, and Lovett had let go of any notion of time - neither past nor future existed for him, it was only the present, and he watched the raft be pulled back to the tanker for one final time, two people scrambling down the hanging net and into the raft, and it was time to start pulling again.

There, in the present, Lovett gripped the railing as a massive wave lifted the _ Coleridge  _ up and then pushed her away with such force that the line was pulled taut, lifting the raft several feet into the air together with its precious cargo. Lovett watched, frozen in place, as the raft smashed back down into the water, and the two people with it. Tommy was shouting at them to untie the rope from the oil tanker to the raft, but Lovett could barely hear him so there was no chance for the people clinging to the raft to make out his words.

“The rope is going to snap!” Tommy yelled, and only Lovett could hear him. But they were close enough, on the raft, that Lovett could work loose the lifebuoy with “RV Coleridge” neatly stenciled on it, to hurl it down towards the raft with all his might. He didn’t see if they were able to grab ahold of it though, because in that moment the rope did snap, and Lovett felt Tommy grab him by the shoulders and wrench him away from the rail.

It all happened so fast Lovett couldn’t understand how Tommy’d had the presence of mind to predict what would happen. The frayed rope whipped back with the force of released tension and would have caught Lovett square in the face if he hadn’t been pulled away. As it was, the rope slashed Tommy across the head with an impact that Lovett only saw, but felt so viscerally he imagined he could hear the horrible, meaty snap of a noise it must have made.

Tommy went down like a fir tree cut off at the root. He hit the deck and Lovett threw himself down efter him, knees skidding on the wet deck as he wrenched Tommy’s limp body up into his lap. He was so heavy, the water increasing the weight of his clothes tenfold, and Lovett hoped someone else was helping the two down in the raft because he was busy using his own water-drenched sleeve to try to stem the blood flowing from Tommy’s forehead, darkening his hair and oozing down the side of his face.

“What did I tell you,” Lovett said to the unconscious man in his arms, tuning out the sound of boots stomping on deck around him. “What did I tell you, huh? I told you this stupid sea would be the death of you, and you didn’t listen. No, Tommy Vietor had to go out and be fucking careless - ‘yeah, see how Lovett likes it, when it’s me knocked out cold!’ You just had to show me up, didn’t you? But guess what, I’m going to fucking bring you back in one damn piece, and there’s nothing you can do about it, you big- you big oaf.”

Lovett was aware of hands on him, someone helping him to his feet and helping him heft Tommy up and carry him inside - but Lovett never let go of Tommy’s hand and he never looked away, not for the entire journey back to Boston, packed beneath the boat’s flooring together with the rescuees from the oil tanker. When they got down and Tommy was propped up against the bulkhead, Lovett pulled his own life preserver off, and then pulled his coat half-off too, to press the bunched-up sleeve of his - Tommy’s - grey knitted sweater against Tommy’s forehead, however ineffectual it might be. He couldn’t bring himself to check for Tommy’s pulse, but he saw Tommy’s leg twitch at one point, and Lovett would have cried if his insides hadn’t turned wooden with exhaustion.

* * *

The presence of journalists with cameras crowding the port when they got in was a surprise to Lovett - he had quite forgotten that there existed a world outside the boat - and he was grateful that Favreau was able to shoulder the attention, direct them away from the work of getting the rescuees and Tommy taken care of. _ Talk about the world turning upside down,  _ Lovett thought distantly in a moment of rare clarity. _ Me, passing on the opportunity to have undivided attention. _

Though he was walking on solid ground, it still seemed to sway beneath his feet, and Lovett would have keeled over if it hadn’t been for Favreau, again, who hustled him into a car somewhere in the chaos and directed the driver to take them to Mrs Nordstrom’s.

“The hospital,” Lovett protested feebly, reaching out to clutch at Favreau as the car navigated out of the port area. He hadn’t put his blood-soaked arm back through the sleeve of his coat, so it was hanging precariously from his shoulder.

“We’ll only be in the way,” Favreau said, altogether too sensible even though his voice wavered a little. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“What? No, I’m not hurt. How’s Tommy?”

Favreau blew out a breath and placed his hand over Lovett’s on his arm.

“He’ll be fine,” he promised, even though he had no way of knowing. Leave it up to Favreau to lie to make you feel better. “We can’t help him now anyway.”

When they got home, to an anxious Mrs Nordstrom who hadn’t gone to bed all night and insisted on putting tea to boil, Favreau bullied Lovett into washing and changing into dry clothes- but Lovett still pulled Tommy’s sweater back on, didn’t dare part with it just yet. Mrs Nordstrom tutted at him, tried to press a cup of tea into his hands but Lovett pushed her away gently. He was aware of how terrible he looked, eyes red-rimmed and hair a mess, when he said, “I need to get to the hospital, Jon.”

Favreau, who had already collapsed into an ottoman with a cup of tea, groaned. He didn’t look much better than Lovett.

“Of course,” he said then, with a sigh. “Hang on, let me put something on and I’ll come with.”

At the hospital, it took a while to convince the nurse to let them in to see Tommy - he was already up, she informed them, and it was good that they’d kept dabbing the wound with salt water because that had kept the edges of it from drying out, making it easier to stitch up. Lovett carefully swallowed the urge to vomit - he was fairly certain he would collapse if he did that - and followed Favreau inside the small hospital room. Tommy was sitting up in his bed, leaned back against several pillows - his eyes were closed, but he was unnaturally still and that was how Lovett knew he was awake.

“Hey, man,” Favreau said softly, and Lovett watched Tommy turn his face toward them and open his eyes. Or his left eye at least - the right seemed swollen shut, the the black stitches sticking out from his eyebrow and crawling diagonally up his forehead to his hairline.

“Hi,” Tommy replied, and he sounded just about as wrecked as Lovett felt. “Are you all right?”

_ “We’re  _ not laid out on a hospital bed,” Lovett said, going for accusatory but unable to muster nearly enough bite to his voice. He blew out a shaky breath and let Favreau settle on Tommy’s bedside, keeping himself a careful half foot away.

“They tell me we got them all back in one piece,” Tommy said, clearing his throat and looking at Favreau from under his lashes. Favreau grinned and clapped Tommy on his arm, gently.

“We sure did,” he said, and his hand settled in the crook of Tommy’s elbow, making Lovett bite down on an unnameable and unbecoming emotion. “No thanks to you. You were busy taking a nap while I got us safely home. How are you feeling?”

“Like I was decked by a baseball bat,” Tommy said and shifted, letting his head fall back against the pillows, closing his eye. “I’ll be fine though. Glad you’re okay, I- I can’t thank you enough for coming out. You didn’t have to do that.”

Lovett swallowed, something bitter in his throat making it difficult to breathe. Favreau’s fingers on Tommy’s arm pressed in, squeezed the muscle for a brief moment.

“We’re glad you’re okay too,” Favreau said warmly, only the brightness of his eyes betraying how hard he was fighting to keep the tears back. “Roosevelt put the lighthouses under the Coast Guard jurisdiction, didn’t he? Become a lighthouse keeper Tommy, that’d keep you out of trouble.”

Tommy laughed, so suddenly that he started coughing. Favreau shot up, told them he’d go find a glass of water, and with a flutter of his coat he was gone, leaving Lovett alone with Tommy and woefully unprepared. And he was the one who had wanted to come here in the first place.

Tommy’s coughing abated on its own, and he cracked his eye open to peer at Lovett. He didn’t say anything, and the silence was so oppressive that Lovett had to break it.

“Good thing you didn’t die, because I’m going to kill you myself for being so damn stupid.”

Tommy only blinked. Lovett crossed his arms, refused to take a step closer.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy said, because of course he was a self-sacrificing buffoon that would say a thing like that.

“You don’t get to be _ sorry,  _ asshole!” Lovett said. “You just fucking, saved people, and almost died in the process, so don’t you fucking _ sorry  _ me. What, you’re going to apologize for being a hero? Fuck you, Tommy.”

Tommy blinked again, and the hand resting on the sheets flexed, like he didn’t know if he wanted to close it into a fist.

“I’m not a hero, Jon,” he said and looked down. “Not like you- I was just doing my job.”

Lovett dug his knuckles into his eyes, breathed out a laugh because he couldn’t not. “Yeah I know, and that makes it worse. You’re just _ like  _ this, Tommy, all the time.”

“I know,” Tommy said quietly, and there was something in the way he said it that made Lovett pause, lower his hand and raise his eyes. Tommy was looking down at his hand on the bedspread, and his brow was furrowed despite the injury, which had to hurt, and, fuck, he looked absolutely devastated.

“Tommy,” Lovett said, and it seemed like it took a lot of willpower for Tommy to raise his gaze to meet Lovett’s. “That’s a _ good  _ thing, you idiot.”

A small smile spread over Tommy’s face like the dawning light over the horizon, and Lovett felt his own stupid breath catch at the sight. He took a step closer, without his brain telling his legs to do it, and Tommy turned his hand on the bedspread, palm up.

Lovett put his hand in Tommy’s, before he could think too long about it, and Tommy immediately laced their fingers together. It stole Lovett’s breath right out of his lungs, this solid gesture of intimacy, and Lovett squeezed Tommy’s hand. His palm was calloused and his fingertips a little cold against the back of Lovett’s hand, and Lovett was sure it was the best feeling in the world.

“What’s this?” Tommy said and tugged at Lovett’s blood-crusted sleeve with his other hand, the sweater obviously at least one size too big for him and conspicuously dark.

“It’s yours,” Lovett said and grinned. Tommy followed the line of his arm with his eyes until he looked up at Lovett’s face, and he smiled too.

When Favreau returned, Lovett took his hand back, but slowly. He didn’t look away from Tommy’s face, and Tommy didn’t look away from his, not even when Favreau handed him the glass of water.

“I think it’s safe to say we’re going to have a great story to tell when we get back home,” Favreau joked when Tommy had drained the glass and put it aside after wiping his mouth.

“Oh, you oughta come back, see Boston in the summer,” Tommy said immediately, but winced as he tried to brush some hair from his forehead and inadvertently touched his injury. “You know, I think I might just take you up on the lighthouse idea.”

Lovett barked out a laugh, which made Favreau laugh too, and Tommy was smiling, like he was happy. It was good being here, Lovett decided, all things considered.


	7. An epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not easy to state the change you made.  
> If I’m alive now, then I was dead,  
> Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,  
> Staying put according to habit  
> You didn’t just toe me an inch, no -  
> Not leave me to set my small bald eye  
> Skyward again, without hope, of course,  
> Of apprehending blueness, or stars  
>   
> \- Sylvia Plath, _Love Letter_

It wasn’t a subject Tommy was eager to dwell on, but if there was something Tommy did well, it was worry about the future. So he worried about it, and Lovett was bound to pick up on it sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner. Tommy just didn’t expect him to bring it up in bed, when he had three fingers up Tommy’s ass.

“You seem a bit distracted,” Lovett said conversationally, like he wasn't in the process of obliterating every coherent thought in Tommy's mind, methodically, with hands as clever as his mouth.

“And whose fault is that?” Tommy panted, turning his face so his words wouldn't be muffled by the pillow. His cheek pressed against something damp, probably his own spit, but his whole body was trembling and he hadn’t the presence of mind to do something about it.

“Not this,” Lovett said and curled his fingers so that Tommy bucked his hips up, the jolt of pleasure almost too intense. “I mean today, in general. You have been for a while. I can tell, you know, when someone doesn't give me their full attention.”

Tommy turned his face back down into the pillow, crossed his arms above his head and breathed.

“You have my undivided attention, Jon,” he said after a moment, because it was true.

“What was that?” Lovett said and leaned across Tommy’s back, his slicked fingers slipping out as he did so. Tommy made a sound, quite without meaning to, and he shifted against the sheets.

“My attention,” he repeated as he felt Lovett’s body slide against his, their thighs becoming a searing point of contact. When Lovett talked, something curled inside Tommy, like the edges of a paper note catching fire. In the beginning he’d tried to snuff out the flame that blackened the paper, but instead Lovett had fanned it into a flame, without ever even trying. “You have it.”

“I sure hope so,” Lovett said and tapped Tommy in the side, just light enough for the touch to tickle. “Hey, will you turn around for me?”

Tommy wanted to say, _ for you, anything,  _ but he’d come on too strong before and it never made them stay. If anything, it made them more eager to leave, and so Tommy only did as Lovett asked, flopping down on his back with Lovett in between his legs. 

Tommy was acutely aware of the thin layer of sweat over his entire body but Lovett didn’t seem to mind. He braced himself on both hands and looked down on Tommy, and Tommy loved him like this, loved the damp lock of hair curling over his forehead, the red of his soft mouth, the dark of his expressive eyes, everything.

“We don’t have to do this,” Lovett said, eyes flicking over Tommy without settling anywhere. “I could just suck you off, no hard feelings. You, uh, don’t have to feel obligated just because I-”

Lovett broke off and pulled his lower lip in between his teeth as Tommy reached up, unable to stop himself, and traced the line of his mouth with his thumb, gently pulling at the lip until the mouth fell open again.

“I want to,” Tommy said, and it was true. He wanted to have Lovett any way he could, this was just one in a long line of ways, and still it fell short of what he really longed for. Ever since he’d laid eyes on him standing on the dock, yelling at him and glaring at him with a thunderous expression that he really had no idea was absolutely magnetic. He was irresistible, because though Tommy had tried, he couldn’t stay away. After receiving word that Lovett was in the hospital, there hadn’t seemed to be a point in denying himself something that was going to be taken from him one way or the other anyway. Better to have loved and lost, and all that.

Lovett sucked his thumb into his mouth then and Tommy groaned audibly. He had no idea how Lovett could just do things like that, stoke the fire inside Tommy so effortlessly when he’d spent a lifetime covering the embers of attraction with the ash of reality. Ever since Lovett had pulled off that woollen cap and revealed an unruly head of brown curls, Tommy had wanted to run his fingers through them. He did so now, pulling his thumb free and threading his fingers in his hair, resting his palm against his skull. Lovett blinked, like he was surprised, and Tommy wondered how many more times he would have to touch Lovett before he started to believe it.

“You tell me if it’s too much,” Lovett said and hitched Tommy’s knee up in the crook of his elbow.

“You’re always too much,” Tommy said with a grin, just to see Lovett grin back, revel in the way the corners of his eyes creased. The chastising slap to his thigh was unexpected, as was the corresponding twitch of Tommy’s cock, but Tommy didn’t have time to think about that right now. Lovett lined himself up, and Tommy thought back to when their positions had been reversed, tried to imagine how Lovett had twisted to make it feel so incredibly good, but then again Lovett had been on all fours. Tommy became quite unable to plan ahead when Lovett pushed in anyway, the feeling new and completely overwhelming.

Tommy screwed his eyes shut and gasped for air. His body tensed automatically, but he breathed through it, focused on Lovett’s arm pressed along his thigh, moved his hand to squeeze Lovett’s solid neck to ground himself.

“Tommy,” Lovett said, and the sound of his name was so reverent in his mouth that Tommy’s eyes fluttered open, despite himself. Lovett had his eyes trained on him, and that was its own kind of intoxicating, to have him so focused on Tommy where his energies were usually directed at everything all at once, perpetually poised for fight or flight. “Hey, we can stop.”

“No,” Tommy said, thought of how incredible Lovett’s fingers had felt, and hefted his other leg up, to press Lovett down and closer. Lovett gave a soft grunt and yielded, spreading his knees to brace himself, and moved just a little deeper. The shift sent a spark up Tommy’s spine and he pressed his lips tight against a moan, eyes falling shut again. Lovett moved again, another burst of pleasure, and Tommy thought he got it, shifted to accommodate.

He felt Lovett’s hand move up his side, squeezing his ribs before running up and down his arm in an almost soothing gesture, and Tommy spared a thought to the wonder of it. Lovett’s hands, never still, occupied with this, with him. Then Lovett braced his hand on Tommy’s chest to move in earnest and Tommy didn’t have any more thoughts to spare besides _ yes, this. _

It felt like Tommy had no control over his body anymore, he was just down to automatic reactions like breathing and the beating of his heart. The snap of Lovett’s hips was smooth and steady, the words he uttered blending together with the noises Tommy was making into a blanket of sound that he was unable to focus on, too preoccupied with staying on top of the cresting wave of his own orgasm.

But when Lovett shifted to get his hand on him and say, “You’re doing so good, Tommy,” he had no choice but to give in and be pulled under. He pressed Lovett tight against him, buried a sound into the side of his neck as he came.

Tommy felt Lovett’s hips stutter against him, and when Lovett gave a drawn-out groan and came inside him it was almost too much, the pleasure skirting along painful in the best way.

Lying there with Lovett, the both of them boneless and drowsy, sweaty limbs entangled, was a serenity Tommy had very seldom known. _ Maybe out at sea on a still day,  _ Tommy thought idly while his hand came up to play with the damp curls at Lovett’s neck. _ With the sea mirroring a clear, white sky.  _ He wished he could show Lovett that, one day, just take him out on open water without a mission and make him see what Tommy saw. But Lovett was leaving Boston, and that was that. It would just be Tommy and the open sea again.

“You’re thinking so loudly, shut up,” Lovett groaned, mouth pressed against Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy laughed and enjoyed how it pressed their bodies together, even if it made Lovett grumble and wriggle a little.

“Then get off me so I can get up and get cleaned,” Tommy said, and Lovett complained inarticulately but obliged, rolling off Tommy to sit up in his rumpled bed. Tommy was aware of his anatomy in a way he hadn’t been before, when he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, but he stilled when he felt Lovett’s hand on his arm.

“Hey,” Lovett said, with a small furrow between his eyebrows. “Are you- I mean, that was okay, right?”

Tommy looked at him and then looked down on his stomach. He pulled a hand through his own come and vindictively slapped it against Lovett’s belly, making him squawk indignantly and pull up the covers around himself. “Hey, okay, point fucking taken, you dick! Go wash up, see if I care!”

Tommy did go wash up, but he was smiling as he walked, relishing in the pleasant ache that was his body at the moment, safe in the knowledge that Lovett wouldn’t want to get out of bed until he absolutely had to.

When he got back, still completely in the nude, he discovered Jon had buried himself under a pile of Tommy’s covers. Tommy found himself grinning as he kneeled on the bed and attempted to unearth him, Lovett putting up a half-hearted fight that told Tommy he enjoyed this a lot. When Lovett at last emerged, his hair was mussed up and his cheeks flushed, and Tommy loved it. Lovett grinned, like maybe he loved it too, and kicked Tommy’s knee out from under him so he could pull Tommy down, and Tommy retaliated by settling all his weight on top of his soft but solid body. He liked how he encompassed Lovett like this and buried his face in Lovett’s neck to smell the musk of his sweat and their sex.

“Now that I’ve got you exactly where I want you,” Lovett said, voice somewhat strained under the weight as he circled his arms around Tommy’s waist, “you’re legally obligated to tell me what’s been bothering you.”

Tommy stayed where he was for just a second before he heaved a sigh and rolled off Lovett, landing on his back. Lovett let him go but rolled over as well, like he was chasing Tommy’s warmth, and said, “You can tell me. I won’t be around to bother you for much longer, so it’s just as good as not telling anyone, really.”

To his own horror, Tommy felt tears prickle beneath his eyelids. He lifted a hand to press his palm against the burning sensation, sucked in a breath before he could answer. Best to get it out of the way.

“That’s just it,” he said. “I guess I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

Lovett went stock still and said nothing, and Tommy thought, _ now you’ve gone and done it, Vietor.  _ But then Lovett shifted and pressed a kiss to the underside of Tommy's jaw, to the birthmark he'd found there and seemed inordinately fond of.

“You know, for what it’s worth, I wish I didn’t have to leave either,” Lovett said conversationally. “That just leaves you free to find a nice girl and settle down, and next year when I come back for more survey work, I’m going to find you with a bunch of tiny little baby Vietors and you can’t come out with us anymore.”

Something painfully hot and bright had started to unfold in Tommy at Lovett’s words, but as was usual, the feeling muddled into confusion by the end of Lovett’s speech, and Tommy didn’t know what to say. He landed on, “A bunch? How many babies do you think I could make in a year?”

Lovett made a sound, like a wet chuckle against Tommy’s throat. Tommy lowered his hand, shifted up to be able to look down at him. Lovett had his gaze firmly set on Tommy’s clavicle, and Tommy reached out with a hammering heart to push his chin up. Lovett’s eyelashes fluttered, but his gaze was unwavering, almost defiant, when he met Tommy’s.

“Jon,” he said, desperately willing his voice to be steady. “I can’t promise that I’ll be able to go out with you next year, but I sure as hell can promise I’ll wait for you.”

Lovett’s gaze flickered, and he licked his lips. Tommy’s heart hurt, it was beating so fast, and he braced himself for Lovett to tell him he needn’t bother. But then Lovett looked up at him again, a small smile playing on his lips, and he said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said and fit his palm against the soft curve of Lovett’s face and pulled him close to kiss him on the mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coast Guard procedure and the science (math and meteorology) are extremely handwaved here, but numerological weather forecasting did begin in earnest in the early 1950s, and the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 was very real. I also stole the concept of an oil tanker ripped in two with the crewmen saved by a scrappy band of Coast Guard members from the real events depicted in “The Finest Hours”, a Disney movie starring Chris Pine and based on a book with the same name. There were actually two oil tankers ripped in half that night, so like, you might think these are ridiculous fanfic circumstances I’ve written, but as usual reality far surpasses fiction.
> 
> You can come say hi on tumblr @trailsofpaper any time, I’m the one making the occasional fanart in the podsa fandom


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